The first line of the Agile Manifesto is, “People and collaboration over processes and tools”. But having the right process still helps. Below are some examples. There’s no one-size-fits-all process. Different teams face different challenges and so need different processes. The Design Council has a process called the Double Diamond. A similar approach is Dual-Track…… Continue reading Agile: What’s The Actual Process?
Agile: what about input metrics?
TODO Collaboration is a key input How to measure
How good are your feedback loops?
For each of the 10 questions, score your team 1-5. Max total score: 50.
When to use Optional in Java?
“you should rarely use an optional in any other capacity than as a return value”. “you should declare a method to return Optional<T> if it might not be able to return a result AND clients will have to perform special processing if no result is returned”. From Effective Java by Joshua Bloch (Third Edition), pages…… Continue reading When to use Optional in Java?
What drives successful companies?
Let’s look at the four outrageously successful companies and see what they can teach us. 1. Apple launched a product different to anything else: the iPhone. It was the first truly easy-to-use, web-enabled computer in your pocket. Using the iPhone was a totally different experience to using it’s closest competitor, the Motorola Razr. 2. Facebook developed killer…… Continue reading What drives successful companies?
How agile are you? Take this quiz!
9 questions that will reveal how agile you really are.
The complexity of product development
What makes product development so complex? its’s because the landscape is constantly shifting. Our competitors are changing. New competitors like AgileMD emerge. Google, and other platforms we rely on are constantly changing. (Google do a major algorithm update every three months). Our users are changing. They moved to remote working during lockdown, which impacts usage,…… Continue reading The complexity of product development
The problem with Agile (and how to fix it)
UPDATE: There is a newer, shinier, quiz version of this post here. The software industry is obsessed with Agile, but there is a big problem. Agile is very different from what actually drives successful companies. Let’s look at what Agile is, and then look at what actually drives successful companies. We’ll look at Apple, Facebook,…… Continue reading The problem with Agile (and how to fix it)
INVEST: It’s Not What You Think
Many Agile people use the INVEST criteria, but it’s not what it seems…
Stop Iterating, Start Adapting.
UPDATE: There is a newer, shinier, quiz version of this post here. Our team recently did an interesting exercise. We each had to say which historical figure we would most like to meet. Alex and I both said Charles Darwin, the great scientist. Darwin wasn’t just a great scientist though, he was the godfather of…… Continue reading Stop Iterating, Start Adapting.
Accelerate team learning… but learning about what?
Over time your team will naturally discover more about it’s users, employees and technology but you need to actively accelerate this. Here are three key ingredients: 1. Users are a key ingredient. How can you make them awesome? You want to find out, “Given I want outcome X, will change Y get me there?”. Hypothesis…… Continue reading Accelerate team learning… but learning about what?