Improving the world with software
Better software. Better questions.
Essays on software development, teams and the craft of building things that last.
Essays, page 10
147 essays in the archive
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Response to critical article on Kanban
I was reading Chris McMahon’s post “Against Kanban” and could not help but think that a response was in order. The post below is a response, in detail to the (flawed) arguments that Chris makes against Kanban. “were revolutionary, because they were software development processes actually created from scratch by people who were very very …
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A feature team needs more than a cross-functional group!
In a conversation with a friend we identified an anti-pattern that can often happen to “feature teams”. Feature teams are supposed to be cross-functional groups that focus the software development process in valuable-chunks of work, which normally cross the whole system (vertical slices of the system).[1] There’s a way in which you can meet that …
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Why specialization in Software development is bad for business
Specialization in software development hurts our business! I’m not talking about the kind of specialization that leads to spend some more time in one area than in others. I’m talking about the specialization that leads us to have Database Administrators (DBA) or Database Designers (DBD) or Kernel programmers that don’t do anything else! Take the …
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Pearls of Wisdom: Taiichi Ohno on management
It is rare that one reads something written in 1978 that feels relevant to today’s world in so many ways that is hard to explain all of its consequences. This is what happened today and I wanted to share that. The following is a couple of paragraphs from the “Toyota Product System” (TPS) by Taiichi …
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Demos, not memos!
An interesting story over at 37signals’ blog about a company/site that was started against someone’s better judgment because the people involved saw a working version of the site not a requirements document!My favourite quote: 1. Ideas are cheap and plentiful. Execution is hard. 2. Meetings suck. 3. Requirements documents suck. Read it. You owe it …
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Marketing fail redux, the Agile Process edition
I was reading a web-site from a “well know” process person/company in the software field (which will remain unnamed) and found the following quote (names changed to protect the guilty): XYZ corporation senior management decided that ABC Unified Process is the way for better quality, higher productivity and lower cost. I can’t begin to describe …
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The curious case of buttoned-up Benjamin
Benjamin works in a consulting company where there was no dress-code unless the client would have a dress-code. Since most consultants were testers and coders (and you know how we dress) the clients understood not to demand a formal dress code. Then Benjamin’s company changed his boss. The new boss required and insisted on everyone …
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What makes a great company? Recognizing you are not one yet…
The statement in the title is true even for those that are commonly recognized as great, as they say “here today gone tomorrow”. If you really want to be great you should not shout it out loud at every opportunity, you should recognize what your strengths are, play to them and always, always be on …
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Bas, and the world are not ready…
My good friend Bas Vodde just published a review of the panflet Scrumban. I see that his review is yet another manifestation of what I titled “the world is not ready“. I don’t think that his ideas are wrong, on the contrary, just that his ideas show that a lot of ground is still to …
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Acceleration, schmeleration. Scott Ambler misses the point…
Through this post on InfoQ I learned that Scott Ambler is writing about productivity in Agile and how to measure it. He comes up with an interesting concept, that of acceleration. Anyone familiar with statistical process control knows that a process does not have “acceleration” by itself. A process is either under statistic process control …
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Why failing matters…
In our world we are often pushed to succeed. All of time. But, as counter-intuitive as it may sound, failure is the key to success! If you are in a position where “they” say “Failure is not an option” or “Make it right the first time” and similar phrases, maybe you should make them watch …
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Another post in favor of another User Story format
Some time ago I wrote a post supporting the idea of a new template for the User Story. In that post I tried to explain why we should bring the “value” (because) clause to the fore, to make it the most important clause of the User Story template. Then John Arrowwood commented on that post …
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