July 29, 2010
The Project
In the Beginning was the Project And then came the Assumptions And the Assumptions were without form and void And the customer conversation was completely without substance and the darkness was upon the face of the workers and they spoke...
February 10, 2010
The Outsider
I was reading John Graham-Cumming today -- he makes the case that amateurs have a long tradition of helping scientists. He uses several examples, including his own discovery of a data error in some climate data -- an error that...
November 28, 2009
Managing Technology Means Being Wrong a lot
Intuition will commonly fail you when dealing with technology. That's why good technologists are also good scientists: looking for patterns, forming hypotheses, and coming up with reproducible tests.
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November 23, 2009
There is no do, only try
Yoda was wrong, but he had a good point. There is no do -- accomplishing a goal is what you focus on but it's not the real reward. The real reward is being able to try -- to execute -- better and better each time you move towards a goal. Want a better attention span? Go make yourself do something that requires it. When you're done -- even if you fail -- you have a better attention span.
October 9, 2009
What's Agile To You?
So what's agile to you?
October 2, 2009
I don't like you very much
There's just always going to be a certain percentage of people who are going to say "I don't like you very much"
July 28, 2009
Agile Project Management: Estimating Project Size
When coaching for agile project management, I have led a lot of teams estimating and delivering technology. in addition, I've been asked by several clients to advise them on how to estimate a project. Plus as a hands-on guy, I've...
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July 24, 2009
What's Your Work Area Look Like? (Agile Coach Version)
I'm finishing up working for a large client next week, and I'm also playing around with the new SnagIt version screen capture widget, so I thought it would be neat to combine the two together and capture what my current...
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May 28, 2009
Online Scrum Tool Features You Need
Looking for that next online scrum tool? A developer who recently wrote a tool for a large corporation talks about what features users _really_ want to see in an application
May 27, 2009
XP Lessons From the Field
I just got through reading the results of a survey of early-adopter XP teams and I thought I would share their conclusions and comment on them. (XP, or Extreme Programming, is a set of programming techniques most associated with agile...
May 26, 2009
Tired of Erlang Innards
Somewhere there's a 300-pound man decked out in all the latest running equipment: new shoes, new sweats, heart-rate monitor and sports drinks, standing in his kitchen eating a twinkie and reading the latest tips on improving your marathon times. Somewhere...
May 15, 2009
Agile Coach Code of Conduct
A while back I started on an Agile Coach Code of Conduct. I noticed that after coaching for a while I started to forget basic principles that should be part of every coaching engagement. So I put this list together...
April 25, 2009
Is Agile Something Teams Do? Or Something We Do To Teams?
"Well nobody asked you your opinion," the coach glared at me, "so you can sit down and shut up. And if you can't sit down and shut up, you can leave the room." I could feel everyone's eyes on me...
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April 1, 2009
CrossFire Charts: Measuring Agile in Matrixed Environments
The CrossFire chart allows teams to measure budgeted performanceagainst traditional agile metrics Here's a little graph I picked up last week. I don't think anybody else has published this, so I'm calling it a "CrossFire". It was created by...
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March 24, 2009
The Agile Jazz Band
Legendary jazz guitarist John Scofield performs during a master class with the UNCG Jazz Ensemble. Agile is like a jazz band. And that's a critical thing to know if you're moving from a specialized waterfall-type environment to an agile...
February 26, 2009
As Agile as the Next Guy
I've been thinking a lot about agile, whether I want to or not lately. As an agile coach, my "day" job is training and helping teams get started using agile techniques. Many times these teams come from waterfall backgrounds with...
February 5, 2009
Tell me What I Know
Right now I've got about 16 teams that I am coaching to some degree. Some I attend weekly meetings. Some I watch the team emails. Some I attend showcases. Some I am helping get started and setting up a backlog....
October 16, 2008
Agile Warrior: Breaking up is Hard to do
The projector painted a screen from Microsoft Access on the wall as the team voices all droned into a low hum. It was Showcase and Retrospective time, and I was visiting a team to try to figure out why one...