November 2010
1 post
3 tags
“What killed us was “one more thing.” We could have easily done three major...”
– 1.0 Is the Loneliest Number — Matt Mullenweg
Good article about the need to actually ship - “Great artists ship” - that’s summed up in one sentence:
But if you’re not embarrassed when you ship your first version you waited too long.
Getting your product out the door, in front...
August 2010
3 posts
4 tags
“A meeting has two critical components: an agenda and a referee.”
– Rands In Repose: How to Run a Meeting
I ♥ Rands.
(And, as an aside while looking up the heart character, I also love that Apple has an entire section in their Character Viewer titled “Divination Symbols”. What I like even more is that they’re all the I-Ching.)
2 tags
“If you don’t have good leadership skills, the rest of it fundamentally...”
– InfoQ: The Role of the Enterprise Architect
Good article, but like many things on InfoQ, light on actual, actionable things to *do*.
The more I get to be an actual architect, instead of an extra pair of hands or a firefighter, the more it’s blatantly obvious that being an architect of...
5 tags
“Crowdsourced testing is the powerful combination of combining web and cloud...”
– InfoQ: Crowdsourced Testing, Changing the Game
A whole lot of vapor surrounding a pretty good idea, in general: Mechanical Turk meets test scenarios, perhaps? I can imagine how it would work, but I don’t see how it would scale, when there are things like CloudTest and JMeter+EC2 to bring...
March 2010
2 posts
6 tags
“Revolutions are like that. They invent and destroy and they only go one way.”
– Seth’s Blog: First and never
3 tags
“Here’s my question: do you or do you not want be the person someone trusts when...”
– Rands In Repose: B.A.B.
Been a while, I know. But, it’s Rands that got me to post this little bit here, and for that I thank him.
Trust is something I feel really strongly about, especially after watching it get eroded quite a bit around here. How do you rebuild this trust, when...
January 2010
2 posts
Surprise, surprise...
I actually put together a blog post. Who’d have thunk it?
4 tags
Sustainable Pace and Meetings
I’ll admit it: I’ve been triple-booked at work more than I can possibly imagine.
Part of that is a pure lack of institutional respect of people’s time, and the culture that dictates that everything is a priority, so obviously the other commitments you’ve made can’t possbily be as important as My Meeting.
But, part of that is an inherent lack of understanding of...
November 2009
3 posts
4 tags
“At the core, every browser has some type of release cycle for every...”
– Microsoft’s Problematic Lack Of Nightly Builds For IE
Really interesting insight into Microsoft’s development cycles for Internet Explorer in an article over at Ars Technica.
It makes me wonder what obstacles Microsoft’s IE Team has that prevents it from making quicker releases...
6 tags
How Do You Change Someone's Mind?
Yesterday, and again this morning, I spent a good chunk of my day changing someone’s mind.
Well, that’s not fair. I spent a good part of my morning convincing someone that the train I was suggesting they take, not the train they were convinced that they needed, was the best way to get to their destination.
One of the hardest parts of working with customers - internal or external -...
8 tags
“You may have a clear vision of what “doing Scrum” or “doing XP” means to you,...”
– “There is No End State When Transitioning to Agile” (Mike Cohn, Succeeding with Agile)
As usual, a good article from Mike Cohn to start off my work week.
This reminds me of an article I read earlier, about process improvement at Toyota (I can’t find the link, but if I do,...
October 2009
4 posts
5 tags
“I urge Scrum coaches to stop talking about XP and start talking about software...”
– Don’t do XP « Agile Anarchy
Great article about Tobias Meyer. I don’t know why I never stopped to think about XP as being over a decade old, but he’s exactly right. Software craftsmanship is a great movement, but I’m concerned that without the “package”,...
4 tags
“Maybe their stories were too big (probably). Maybe their estimates were too far...”
– Managing Product Development » What Would a Successful Agile All-Remote Team Look Like?
Aside from sounding like some Agile Awards Team (“And now, your 2009 Agile All-Remote Team!”) Johanna has a good overview of some of the hurdles facing remote teams.
My two most recent...
2 tags
“An easy test of micromanagement is to let your team know you are confident in...”
– An open letter to micromanagers « Scott Berkun with thanks to @HackerChick
This is an interesting supporting article to Mike Cohn’s article that I quoted earlier, about the team micromanaging itself. Micromanagement isn’t necessarily bad, depending on who’s doing the...
6 tags
“The original XP book includes this magical role of Customer (as in On-Site...”
– Gojko Adzic » The Mythical Customer Problem
Great, short article by Gojko on how to better handle the “Product Owner is never available” problem, with a quick reference back to Collaborative Specifications from his fantastic book - “Bridging the Communication Gap”.
September 2009
3 posts
4 tags
“It is valuable for a business to be able to identify people who have the skills,...”
– Whinging Pissants | xProgramming.com
You know, I love Ron. I understand that some people don’t, and find his style too abrasive. So be it.
Regardless of that, the fact remains that he’s one of the best minds in the Agile community, and the work he’s doing to try to bridge the...
6 tags
“Yes, agile is about micromanagment, but it’s about the team micromanaging...”
– Ssssh….Agile Is All About Micromanaging | Mike Cohn’s Blog - Succeeding With Agile®
Good, short article by Mike Cohn. It illustrates the necessity for personal responsibility in Agile, and the necessity for micro-management, even if it’s just micro-management of your own tasks...
6 tags
“We did that with Agile. The term “Agile” was vague at the beginning, as an...”
– Watering Things Down Is Not Good For The Plants | xProgramming.com
I love reading Ron’s work. He’s so straightforward and to-the-point, and has a fantastic way to cut through the bull to the point we’re all talking around.
The recent conversations about Scrum and engineering...
August 2009
4 posts
3 tags
“In order to deter people from showing up late to their daily “Scrum”...”
– Powers of Two: Charging Fees for Tardy Meeting Participants is Avoiding the Root Cause
Good article that, I think, is totally summed up in the first two paragraphs: if the meetings aren’t seen as valuable, then of course people won’t be motivated to attend, or see their late arrival as...
3 tags
“In the cruise phase each defect is accompanied by the sound of...”
– Three Rivers Institute » Blog Archive » To Fix Or Not To Fix?: Another Good Question (via @bpettichord)
Wow, I’m on a Kent Beck kick today. Thanks, Bret!
We’ve got such a loud defect siren that it’s deafening at times. Sure, we’re theoretically at our...
4 tags
“The problem with chasing the dream too long is that you end up without the...”
– Three Rivers Institute » Blog Archive » Approaching a Minimum Viable Product (emphasis mine)
Isn’t learning one of the core benefits of Agile development? Closer contacts with customers, to learn what they want, how they work. Shorter release cycles to get more frequent,...
6 tags
“The first thing we need to agree on is what it means to scale. According to our...”
– NoSQL: If Only It Was That Easy « Marked As Pertinent
Good article on some of the NoSQL options for data storage and retrieval. But, the quote above is so important when talking about scalability. It’s not about performance, and I think that too often, the two of them get confused.
...
July 2009
3 posts
6 tags
“In some organizations, it’s a badge of honor to get more work. I know of...”
–
Column info : No: Such a Difficult Word
Whew, this hits really close to home.
I struggle with this all the time. Part of what makes the good people good, and a huge part of the reason I got into Agile at all, was because I enjoy helping. I enjoy making things better. I still - for...
3 tags
“In my experience, teams have a certain amount of potential. Conditions can be...”
–
Succeeding with mediocrity - Jimmy Bogard
Good article by Jimmy Bogard, with some difficult to accept statements about maximum potential of teams. It’s hard to argue, though, that without support from the top to nuture and develop high-performing teams, the best an organization can hope...
“If someone finds a bug during a sprint that is related to the features being...”
– Bugs on the Product Backlog | Mike Cohn’s Blog - Succeeding With Agile®
I’ve always struggled with bugs versus features, and how to manage and incorporate them into a backlog. I’m glad to see Mike say that I’m not crazy, and that they should go directly on the backlog. ...
June 2009
14 posts
8 tags
Training for the Marathon
I took a bike ride last week with a friend who’s training for a half-marathon coming up soon - she ran, while I rode. Suffice to say, I was at a slower pace than I usually ride, and that left me time to think about the process of her training.
The first thoughts were all about the ideas of sprints versus iterations, and how far too often, teams end up falling into the “we never...
4 tags
“Serenity
Do you accept that the unexpected is natural? Have you given up...”
– Aspects of Truthfulness | Agile Advice - Working With Agile Methods (Scrum, OpenAgile, Lean)
A good list of the qualities that make up a successful Agile coach or Scrum Master, in my opinion. The ability to accept the inevitability of the unexpected, and the ability to therefore react without...
6 tags
One day in Kanban land - Henrik Kniberg's blog →
Via @ronjeffries and @testobsessed.
Crystal-clear description of how life in Kanban works, and does a fantastic job of explaining how a fixed number of work-in-progress items works in reality. Managing release cycles can be harder in Kanban-land: if you have a collection of five stories that must be included in a public release, there’s an additional, necessary “Live” step,...
5 tags
“It’s worth mentioning that the flip side of taking the blame is not taking the...”
– Taking Responsibility « Development at Guidewire
I’ve read this article three times now, pausing each time and re-reading several different parts. Each time, I uncover different and complementary feelings about the idea of architects as the individuals being ultimately responsible for...
4 tags
Self-Organizing Teams: Natural Leaders
There’s been a thought running through my head today, which was planted there by an excellent email to the scrumdevelopment list managed by Yahoo! Groups.
(If you’re not already a member, I’d highly recommend you join. It’s a higher-volume list, but the signal to noise ratio is excellent.)
It’s been bothering me, simply because it touches on one of the Agile...
4 tags
After WatirCraft →
watir:
As I’ve announced elsewhere earlier this month, Pete Dignan and I are shutting down WatirCraft LLC. We’ve each decided to go our separate ways. For several months now Pete has been focussing his…
I saw that Bret Pettichord took a job at Convio a month or so ago (congrats both to Bret AND Convio - hopefully that means that, as a Convio customer, their products will only get better!) but...
10 tags
Agile, Naturally: Brutal Honesty
Over the course of my life, I’ve come to appreciate brutal honesty more and more.
I’ve been reading “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell, and chapter seven is titled “The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes”. While interesting and very readable in general, toward the end of the chapter, Gladwell discusses the aftermath and rebuilding of Korean Airlines after a string of...
8 tags
Scrum Master of Last Resort
Last week, Brian Marick wrote about the idea of the Agile Alliance sponsoring a program to provide a “Scrum Master of Last Resort” to teams in trouble, struggling to make their Agile team successful, meet their Agile project goals, help Agile adoption take hold within their organization. At first blush, I thought it was a great idea for Someone Else to do and manage.
The more I...
8 tags
Agile, Naturally: Single Wringable Neck
After writing my last post, I kept thinking about War Rooms, and the natural tendency for people to assemble and use Agile methodologies when they needed swift, decisive, effective action.
My mind went back to the Presidental War Room, the idea of the Joint Chiefs sitting around a darkened room with the Cabinet and the President during a time of national crisis, and the thoughts behind what...
8 tags
“We humans like to take a very soft cloud of ideas and give it a name, such as...”
– My Named Cloud Is Better Than Your Named Cloud | xProgramming.com
First, I love how Ron Jeffries has an uncanny ability to cut through the crap that floats around in the Agile community and get to the heart of a problem with a few short, simple questions or observations.
The Named Clouds idea,...
5 tags
WatchAgile Coaching Tips - Agile Coaching
As a follow-up, here’s a video of Rachel speaking at Skills Matter, on tips for Agile coaches. Again, fantastic information for coaches specifically, but also great stuff for anyone with a vested interest in the success of an Agile team, and the desire to help make a team better.
6 tags
“You’ll find some excerpts from the book on the Pragmatic site so you can...”
– Agile Coaching Beta release - Agile Coaching
Rachel Davies announced that her new book, “Agile Coaching”, is now available in beta form on the Pragmatic Bookshelf site. I just finished reading the excerpt about Working With People, which Rachel points out is specifically about...
8 tags
“I care about joyful teams. It seems I often visit teams that could both do...”
– Untitled - ScrumMaster of Last Resort
Brian Marick’s post about the Scrum Master of Last Resort - a really interesting idea that I’ve been rolling around in my head. I’m going to be talking more about this in the next day or two, but in short, I think this is a fantastic idea...
1 tag
Agile, Naturally
This weekend, I bought a new phone; for the past four days, I’ve had the opportunity to be on the outside of a non-traditional Agile team, looking in as an interested but removed third party.
The new Palm Pre came out this past weekend, and while the gadget geek in me could go on for a long time about the device, that’s really not the point of this story. In short, like any product...