Maybe we don’t need a big meeting about X. Maybe it’s better to have lots of small meetings. 2 or 3 people meeting for 5-10 minutes. It’s the Steve Jobs approach. Today it was Dave and Jamie, then Dave, Matt and Martin. Friday it was Matt and Larry. Tomorrow it might be Martin and Joe.…… Continue reading Conversations. Not meetings.
Category: Agile
Top 5 Books For Evil Masterminds
If, like me, you are plotting world domination, here are my favorite books on the subject. “Purple Cow” (Seth Godin). Remarkable products sell themselves. Seth has a great writing style. Inspirational. “Adapt” (Tim Harford). How to innovate your way to a remarkable product – experiment based on variation and selection. Great stories including toasters, Iraq, Google, climate…… Continue reading Top 5 Books For Evil Masterminds
Agile is hard…
Agile is hard. Because the world is hard. Requirements change. Estimates are inaccurate. Agile turns these challenges to its advantage. Traditional methodologies, such as Waterfall, pretend the challenges can be beaten into submission using monolithic documents and GANTT charts. They can’t. Get over it.
Less Mass = More Agility
A quick thought experiment if you work somewhere with an big company mentality… Would the company be better off with half the product and half the mass? Half the mass means half the maintenance, testing, integration, points-of-failure, management, politics and more. Would this enable development of new features and products (such as mobile apps) twice as…… Continue reading Less Mass = More Agility
Top 5 Tips on Agile from “Getting Real” (book by 37signals)
“Underdo Your Competition” “Less Mass” “Half, Not Half-Arsed” “Start With No” “Hire Less And Hire Later” And a couple of my favourite quotes… Steve Jobs ~ “innovation… comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much” Charles Darwin ~ “It is not the…… Continue reading Top 5 Tips on Agile from “Getting Real” (book by 37signals)
Testing myth: “The code is so simple – it doesn’t need a test”
If the code is so simple, then it will be simple to test it. And at some point, it’s likely the feature will be enhanced. If there is an existing test then it should be simple to enhance it. If there isn’t an existing test then things can quickly get messy. The more complex the…… Continue reading Testing myth: “The code is so simple – it doesn’t need a test”
The spectrum of development styles – from central planning to anarchy
There is a spectrum of development methodologies. Centrally organised Backlog driven by product manager Delivery driven by project manager Self organising Backlog driven by product manager Delivery driven by developers Developer driven Backlog and delivery driven by developers
Feedback loops in Scrum
Feedback and feedback loops are a key part of Scrum: Iterative releases/demos. Regularly get feedback from the business and from end users. Sprint velocity. Velocity takes into account the accuracy of previous estimates. Retrospectives. Get feedback from the team as to how they could become more effective. Standups. Promotes feedback between members of the team.…… Continue reading Feedback loops in Scrum
Estimation: “ideal days” vs “relative size”
A common criticism of using “relative size” is that developers tend to estimate in ideal days and then translate it to relative size. I disagree. I find myself doing the opposite. This week, when asked for an estimate i said “twice what it took us to deliver X”. Where X was a feature that we…… Continue reading Estimation: “ideal days” vs “relative size”