Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 8
314 essays in the archive
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Innovating in how we build organizations, networks and happy lives: The Happy Melly project
Photo: Fr Antunes @ flickr It all started in a sunny Autumn day in Konstanz, Germany. With the Alps and the Bodensee lake (aka Lake Constance) in the background Jurgen presented a simple idea: there are people out there who hate their jobs and want to actively transform their workplaces to make them the kind …
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Impact Mapping, what is it good for? A quick review
If you’ve paid any attention to twitter lately you know that Gojko Adzic has publihsed a new book. The book is called Impact Mapping, and describes a method to describe a system in a way that: helps the practitioner create better plans and roadmaps that ensure alignment of business and delivery, and are easily adaptable …
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The perfect gift for a geek…
So, as you have probably noticed: winter is coming. With it come the long evenings, the rainy or snowy weather and the unstoppable need to curl up with a good book by the fire place. Perhaps even drinking Glöggi (Mulled Wine). It just so happens that I have found a great book for you! Edgar …
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A better way to predict project release date!
Many people commented on my previous post about Story Points, and how there are much better ways to estimate Agile projects. In this post I’ll concentrate on one project where the predictive power of counting the number of stories/items completed/iteration was a better predictor of the release date and the scope delivered than story points. …
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Story Points Considered Harmful – Or why the future of estimation is really in our past…
This article is the companion to a talk that myself and @josephpelrine gave at OOP 2012. We have a lot to learn from our ancestors. One that I want to focus on for this post is Galileo.Galileo was what we would call today a techie. He loved all things tech and was presented an interesting …
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Kanban vs Scrum, the ultimate fight? Don’t think so, here’s why:…
Wow, what a week! A BIG post (Link removed at the request of the author) on Kanban by Scrum evangelist [unammed at the requset of author] litterally put the blogosphere (and twittersphere on fire!). It is good to have these family fights in the Agile family once in a while. As a life-philosopher once said: “These …
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XP2012: The Extreme Challenge
“Agile has crossed the chasm” we hear often. But has it really? In the last few years Agile has gone from being “the cousin in the corner that shouts and screams but no one wants to talk to” to being “the famous cousin who everyones wants to talk to”. It was not an easy transition, …
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Kanban in a networked process — Visualise the network!
It seems that the idea of a work-network instead of work-flow is catching on and I’d like to throw a bit more fuel in that fire! Knowledge work is not linear! This we have learned from the experiences with failed Waterfall projects. There are things we do over and over again, and there are things …
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Adapting to a different country and culture – a story
This is the story of Jerome (names changed to protect the innocent), and his adventures while changing countries for work. Jerome always wanted to work in another country. He had bought into the whole globalization/Cultural experimentation ideas of the 90’s. The economy was growing quite strongly, there was a strong need for IT professionals and …
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Dude! Where’s my manager? or Why you should attend LESS2011
Many teams start their agile transition from the “developer-side”. This is quite normal, developers (coders and testers) feel the pain more than others because they need to actually get the product/system finished. But by focusing on developers, aren’t we missing something? Aren’t we forgetting that many of the consequences we so detest come from un-informed …
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Guest post: Building and scaling a startup – Feature or component teams?
There are some really cool startups in Berlin. Last week I met Alexander Grosse (@klangberater) from SoundCloud at ALE2011. Alexander is their VP of engineering and he had been thinking and writing about Feature teams. After reading his article I thought it would be a good and balanced view at that topic that could generate …
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On rewarding and performance systems…
The ideas of “pay-for-performance”, and it’s twin sister “management by objectives” exist to try and increase the performance of a group and ultimately the whole company. The basic idea is: promise them a carrot and they’ll work more / better. But is that true? Can a company really perform better by promising people they will …
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