Last week, my local public radio station (KCFR) was holding its annual pledge drive. I love NPR and local public radio and always give to support it. But, it’s kind of annoying when they spend an entire week asking for pledges, making me feel guilty if I don’t give, and worst of all, providing just about zero value for the entire week. That’s right, in the usual 12 hours of listening that I do each week, it turned out that the local station asked for pledges about 90% of that time and provided programming that was valuable to me only about 10% of the time. So yes, I tuned…
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Chris Spagnuolo's Edgehopper
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Don’t beg like NPR…unless you’re NPR
15 Jun 2009 | 9:17 am -
Facebook Username’s are Live! What’s yours?
12 Jun 2009 | 9:47 pmWell, it’s official now, Facebook usernames are live and doing well. In a wild frenzy to grab their custom vanity URL’s, Facebook users created over 200,000 custom user names in the first 3 minutes of Saturday morning (and yup, I was one them too). After 15 minutes, Facebook reported over 500,000 new user names. One of the highlights of the night was Benjamin Standefer snagging Ashton Kutscher’s aplusk moniker (http://www.facebook.com/aplusk). Guess we’ll be seeing Ben on some news shows tomorrow! If you didn’t get your Facebook user name yet, you still can at… -
Enough with Bad Auto DM’s Already
9 Jun 2009 | 12:09 pmOK, maybe this is going to sound cranky, and I’ve talked about it before, but if you’re on Twitter I’m begging you to please, please, please stop sending out bad automatic direct messages to everyone who follows you. I’ve already followed you, and now we’re following each other and I really, sincerely appreciate the fact that you’ve followed me too. But that doesn’t mean you have to send me an auto DM selling whatever it is you’re selling. Quite frankly, it gets lost in the clutter of all the other people trying to sell me things on Twitter. I… -
Social Media Marketers: Please take your tongue out of my mouth!
4 May 2009 | 10:00 amHow many emails have you received that start this way: “Hello, My name is Van Curtis. I work as an international auditor for the Delta Lloyd Bank (ALM) Asset Liability Managerial department monitoring five branches including Singapore, Belgium and Netherlands. I have taken pains to find your contact through personal endeavors which I may explain to you upon your response. A possible family member of yours (name withheld for security reason) died nine months ago leaving behind an investment total of EU5.95M (Five Million Nine hundred and Fifty Thousand Euros) with my bank.” I… -
What the F**k is Social Media?
28 Apr 2009 | 5:00 amWow! Bet that title got your attention. It got mine too! It’s actually the title of a great presentation I stumbled across on SlideShare this weekend from Marta Kagan. Marta is the Managing Director at Espresso and she’s also the author of a great blog The Secret Diary of a Bonafide Marketing Genius. Dropping the F-bomb always gets people’s attention, but check out this presentation and I’ll bet you’ll find more interesting and memorable ideas than that F-bomb Marta drops on you. Related posts:Social Media and Your BusinessSocial Media Marketers: Please take your…
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Agile Blog
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Does Distributed Agile Require a Tool? And 2 Other Threads From Atlanta
1 Jul 2009 | 1:32 pmAgile Success Tour hits Atlanta. Next stop - D.C. On June 25th, Rally hosted the Atlanta swing of the Agile Success Tour, where local software and IT leaders met to share Agile implementation stories, ask for advice and participate in group breakout sessions. Catch the next event in Washington D.C. on July 23. The event is free, but registration is required. Below are 3 themes that developed at the event: 1. Executing as a distributed Agile organization almost requires a tool Many of the discussions focused on best practices for Agile adoption in a globally distributed team. One of the points… -
#4 Flexibility and Rhythm — Top 10 Characteristics of an Agile Organization
25 Jun 2009 | 3:10 pm#4 in our list of the Top Characteristics of an Agile Organization is about the importance of Flexibility and Rhythm. With regard to the video reference to Jim Collins, you can read the interview about his new book and his personal rhythm on the NYTimes site. Verne Harnish’s Gazelles.com teaches the Rockefeller Habits on business rhythm. See our previous coverage of #10 Work/Life Balance, #9 Being a Servant and Leader, #8 Sustainable and Successful, #7 Contributing to the Community and the Company, #6 Collaborative and Smart and #5 Bottom-up and Top-down Decision Making. Stay tuned… -
Agile and Lean Software Development - an Oxymoron?
22 Jun 2009 | 8:50 amI have been told repeatedly that my brain thinks in pictures, and as a result I have to work hard to communicate my logic effectively in words. Recently in my argument against an Agile Process Maturity Model, I made a comment that Agile is an instance of Lean. One of the replies on the Agile Alliance Group of Linked-In countered that my statement isn’t accurate - and in fact a team being both “Agile and Lean” is an oxymoron. So, I looked in the mirror and said this must not be clear. I need to communicate better in both words and pictures. “The term Oxymoron originates… -
Chi Development: The Process Is The Goal
19 Jun 2009 | 12:25 pmLast year I entered the Marine Corps Marathon. I’d never run more than 10K in my whole life, but I felt the urge to do a marathon at least once. And of course I didn’t want to just finish. I had to get close to my friend Dave’s time who did 3:17 in the Loch Ness Marathon. Runners in the Loch Ness Marathon pacing themselves So I started an ambitious training program. As time progressed and I was not getting any faster, I started training harder. Four weeks before the race I had to pull out with a stress fracture and slightly torn Achilles tendon. As an Agile coach, I had… -
eBay Goes Agile to Get its Tech Savvy Back - BusinessWeek
18 Jun 2009 | 2:19 pmI believe that Agile project management in small, co-located teams crossed into the mainstream back at the sold-out Agile 2007 conference, but Agile program management at scale is just now heating up. Last week’s article on eBay’s Agile adoption in Business Week (combined with other recent news) shows us that organizational agility is becoming a mainstream topic at the highest levels. The market is no longer asking, “Can we scale Agile across the enterprise and large distributed teams?” and instead is asking, “How do I get there?” and “Who can help…
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Managed Chaos
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Interested in Agile Training/Consulting for your Organization?
28 Jun 2009 | 9:29 pmRecently I’ve been getting a lot of request for Agile Training and Consulting. Unfortunately the expectations from the training are not clear for me. Most people approach me saying, “we want a TDD training” or “we want a Project Management training“. Once I start talking to them & their team (or even worse sometime during the training), I realize the topic we’re discussing is not their biggest issue. I get a feeling that most organizations have not done their homework to figure out what they really need and how they should go about it. They might have… -
Killing Speculative Generality Code Smell
26 Jun 2009 | 7:24 amI’m just reviewing a project’s code. I found a common pattern used in their code base. Every class implements an Interface. Each interface is only implemented by one class. Even more interesting, this interface is not exposed outside. In other words, its not exposed as part of the API. Then my question is Why do we need the interface? Why can’t we just use the class directly? Apparently there is no valid answer. Some told me, Spring forces you to have interfaces. That’s not true. Some told me their mocking framework does not support mocking a class. This is also not… -
Communication in Code #1 Priority
26 Jun 2009 | 1:36 amHere is a sample of code (happens to be from a test) which I think is not communicative. public class ContactNumberTest { final String exampleCountryCode1 = "91"; final String exampleCountryCode2 = "1"; final String exampleNumber1 = "8012345678"; final String exampleNumber2 = "2028569635"; ContactNumber phoneNumberA = new ContactNumber(exampleCountryCode1,exampleNumber1); ContactNumber phoneNumberB = new ContactNumber(exampleCountryCode1,exampleNumber1); ContactNumber phoneNumberC = new… -
DesignChef: New Community Launched by Directi
22 Jun 2009 | 11:06 pm@Directi we are committed to improve the technical community in India. We started off with TechCamp. Next we launched CodeChef. And now we proudly present DesignChef. Unlike CodeChef, which was targted at Developers, DesignChef is targeted at Design Professionals like Usability Experts, UX Specialists, Interaction Designers, Front-end developers, etc. We welcome you to join this non-profit, community initiative and help us grow it. Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious This Post Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit This Post Stumble… -
Misinterpretation of Command and Control
21 Jun 2009 | 9:02 amTill a year ago, I used to think of command & control as micro-management. Last year I heard Mary Poppendieck give a different perspective about it in her keynote(pdf). That’s when I realized that Command & Control means quite opposite of micro-management. We all know Command and Control comes from US Army. During wars, the Commanders would direct (command) the troops on ground about the next move (goal/mission). And then the staff (troops) on ground would figure out the best strategy to achieve the mission. This is very different from micro-management. Once the Commanders gives…
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Scrum 4 You
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What is a Backlog Item?
2 Jul 2009 | 11:19 amA Backlog Item is a defined as "Deliverables, Stories, Functionality Requirements". A Backlog Item can be anything as long as the team understands that it has to have business value and is meaningful for the Product Owner. -
Kaiserlautern hat 32 neu Certified ScrumMaster
1 Jul 2009 | 12:35 pmMorgen beginnt der Scrumalltag für ein neues Team in Kaiserlautern. Einer meiner Kunden hat in den letzten beiden Tagen von mir 32 Mitarbeiter trainieren lassen, um nun in der Lage sein zu können, Scrum selbständig zu implementieren. Am Ende des Trainings hat der CTO der Company noch einmal den Anwesenden bestätigt, dass die Team die Unterstützung [...] -
Coaching Ausbildung - Contrain - Mantz/Rösner
25 Jun 2009 | 12:28 pmIch habe schon einmal von einem meiner Lehrer erzählt: Dieter Rösner. Zusammen mit Herrn Mantz ist er mein Trainer bei der Coaching Ausbildung der Contrain Gmbh. Die Contrain GmbH bietet diese vom Q-Pool 100 zertifizierte Ausbildung nun schon zum 8. Mal an. Ich habe mich entschieden, bei meinen “alten” Lehrern diese Ausbildung zu machen, weil ich [...] -
Czech Republic has 16 new ScrumMasters
25 Jun 2009 | 2:57 amThanks to Vaclav Stoupa, organizer of the WebExpo 2009 in Praha in October this year. The Certified ScrumMaster class was a big success in Lipno this week. Not only because we trained 16 new people as CSMs, but because of the great fun we had. A lot of wonderful questions, a lot of very very [...] -
Open Loops — I closed some loops
24 Jun 2009 | 1:06 pmIn the middle of a Sprint a ScrumMaster will ask his team if they are going to meet their commitment. And I have to say, well it looks great. I will meet my Sprint Goals and I will have all 4 maior and all other important stories done. But I will not be able to do [...]
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All About Agile
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Themes in Agile Software Development
2 Jul 2009 | 2:42 pmAgile software development teams often use User Stories as a simple and concise way to express user requirements.Ideally these User Stories are broken down as small as possible, whilst also trying to minimise dependencies.Naturally, though, as you break User Stories down smaller, they become increasingly inter-dependent. Like most things in software development, it's a balancing act.Break the User Stories down as small as possible. But stop breaking them down when it becomes onerous or pointless to do so. When a User Story can be delivered (done) in less than 1 day, I think there is little… -
The Power of a Whiteboard
2 Jul 2009 | 2:42 pmAgile software development teams often use low-tech, manual methods for tracking their work. Post-it notes or cards on a whiteboard. Charts drawn by hand. Sketches for architecture and design.But why, for such a high-tech industry like software development, would agile teams do this, when there are plenty of project management tools available; even tools that are purpose-built for agile software development?Personally I can see why. I think a whiteboard offers loads of advantages over electronic tools. They're mainly soft factors, I admit, but I think a whiteboard is hard to beat.First of… -
'All About Agile' Seminar
2 Jul 2009 | 2:41 pmI've spent the last 2 years or so reaching out via my blog and posting all sorts of comments and information about my experiences with agile software development. I am now thinking of running a seminar, in order to do the same thing on a face-to-face basis.I think the area where I have most to offer is for people starting out with agile; people that might be interested in my explanation of the 10 key principles of agile, and my explanation and experience of how to implement Scrum.I have seen significant benefits from implementing agile development using Scrum, having implemented it… -
3 Reasons Why I Wouldn't Do Agile Software Development
2 Jul 2009 | 2:41 pmAgile software development has been a revelation for me. It has brought me and my teams much success, and a very rewarding working environment.Sometimes I hear people say that agile development isn't appropriate in all circumstances.In fact, I used to say that myself; however now I'm not so sure.There are some circumstances where an organisation's culture is possibly too different to successfully adopt agile. At the moment I can think of only 3 reasons why I wouldn't do agile software development:1. If I was working for an organisation that believed it needed complete clarity about a solution… -
Estimating in Agile Software Development
2 Jul 2009 | 2:41 pmI've written quite a bit about various aspects of estimating in agile software development. I think it's about time I joined up the dots...PRODUCT BACKLOGThe Product Backlog is a feature list. Or a list of User Stories if that's your approach. Either way, it is a simple list of things that are of value to a user - not technical tasks - and they are written in business language, so they can be prioritised by the Product Owner. There are no details about each feature until it is ready to be developed, just a basic description and maybe a few notes if applicable.'POINTS MAKE SIZES'Each item on…
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Agile Software Development
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The 7 Software Development Wastes - Part 1
27 Jun 2009 | 11:00 pmIntroduction The more I learn about Lean, the more I realize how much we can learn from Lean teachings and how they apply to software development practices. Typically, we go about our day-to-day activities without thinking about the bigger picture. Lean specifically addresses the complete end-to-end process with the view of enhancing cycle time and quality. Lean Value stream mapping is one of the key areas for helping us learn where we fail, but in particular, what I'd like to address in the next series of posts are the 7 wastes which Lean identifies and which I believe are worth mentioning. -
Who's the owner? Shared code vs. code ownership
23 Jun 2009 | 1:05 amI think it's widely recognized that shared code is important in agile teams. It's an effective way to streamline your development process, making your teams more flexible and productive. Transitioning from code-ownership to shared code can be hard. Lets compare the two, look at the problems in transitioning from one to the other and see how we can ease this transition. Shared code is only a corollary practice in extreme programming but most agile teams I've seen implement it successfully. Many other teams are still in a situation where team members have what I call code ownership, the code… -
Chopper Shops
21 Jun 2009 | 11:00 pmPhoto (c) Janusz Gorycki I have been watching an episode of American Chopper the other day. I must admit that I am a bit of a fan of this show – not necessarily because of its main plot premise of a clash of personality between the father and the soon (which is rather cheesy and quite clearly badly acted instead of real), but rather because I like watching “how stuff is built” - in this case, how you can build a gorgeously looking motorcycles from the rusty pieces of metal, using not much more than a set of rather primitive tools. It was an episode where the guys at OCC bought… -
Measuring velocity is not enough to determine team productivity
19 Jun 2009 | 11:00 pmIntroduction Another interesting question was brought up in a LinkedIn discussion thread this week: "Is velocity the right approach to measure productivity of team members working in Scrum. If not, then how can productivity of team members be measured in Scrum?" Here are my thought on this topic. The purpose of velocity Like burndown charts, velocity is just another metric which the team can use to reach what I believe is the ultimate goal – sustainable throughput. Velocity in my opinion, is not a metric for determining productivity. Productivity or team efficiency is difficult to measure… -
Burndown charts - It's not about staying below the line
12 Jun 2009 | 11:00 pmIntroduction I recently participated in a Scrum development discussion thread on Yahoo Groups where one member new to Scrum asked the following: "Our burndown chart's remaining work line always goes up. As a Scrum Master, what do I have to do to make it go down?" This question, surprisingly, generated a lot of response from the community. I found it puzzling to see how adamant some were to introduce solutions to get the remaining work line to go below the estimated work line. <!--break--> Goal I believe that the underlying goal should not necessarily be about staying below the estimated…
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Agile Thinkers: Members Blog Posts
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How Agile Practices address the Five Dysfunctions of a Team ?
Since times immemorial, ideas, objects and experiences of grand stature and lasting economic, social and emotional value have been created by men and women working together in teams. Granted that some extraordinary work in the fields of arts, philosophy and sciences was done by truly exceptional individuals, apparently working alone, I suspect that they too were ably supported by other selfless and unsung individuals (in the backoffice, perhaps) who all worked together as a team. Right from the great wars, social upheavals, political resistance, empire building, freedom struggles and forming… -
Scrummy?
I came across this website completely by accident via stumbleupon: scrumy.com hell if the video doesn't convince you I don't know what will ;-) lol -
Survey: What are your thoughts on this recession?
Hello Agile Thinkers! Currently, Neuron Global is creating a Special Report on the Current Economic downturn. I am writing you today because we are still in the process of finding out what issues and fears are at the forefront of people’s minds and we very much need help in collecting this research. We aim to develop a timely white paper, available online, that answers critical questions like: 1. What lessons from economic downturns in the past can be applied to today? 2. What information do I need to know to survive & thrive in a prolonged recession? 3. What are things that I can do to… -
Self managing/organising teams: Hey Scrummaster, let the team decide!
A self-organizing team is a powerful concept. But what if the team collectively decides to go into a direction that you as a Scrum Master know for sure that they will hit problems. (or at least you think) F.i. they decide to abandon retrospectives. Will you respect their decision or will you try to change it? Would you go for option 1) respect the team or 2) try to convince the team away from their decision. May I ask you, intelligent agilist, to provide examples of similar conflicts you encountered in real life. If you solved the situation, please let us know how. If not, just post the… -
Mary Poppendieck is giving a free talk in Copenhagen 24th of June
The title of the paper is: " Will Agile Software Development end on the dumping grounds of History" Read more: http://www.bestbrains.dk/english.aspx/Workshops/Free_lecture_with_Mary_Poppendie\ ck There is also still a chance to get a seat in the 2 day class : Practitioners Course in Lean Software Development, June 23-24 in Copenhagen. And at the same time experience the Danish Mid-Summer. :-) Read more here: http://www.bestbrains.dk/english.aspx/Workshops/Poppendieck-2008
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ScrumAlliance
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Ultimate Software Named Best to Work For: Scrum Cited as a Reason
1 Jul 2009 | 8:34 am -
Como fazer o Scrum acontecer em ambientes corporativos
30 Jun 2009 | 5:03 amComo fazer o Scrum acontecer em ambientes corporativos -
Scrum Alliance Plagiarism Policy for Certification Applications
12 Jun 2009 | 5:52 pm -
Scrum Alliance Exam Administration and Retake Policy
12 Jun 2009 | 5:49 pm -
Driving Agile Transformation
3 Jun 2009 | 8:32 amPresented with Adriano Romero at the 2009 Scrum Gathering in Brazil.
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Agile Alliance: All
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Programs
6 Jun 2009 | 1:02 pmThe Agile Alliance conducts much of its work via programs proposed by members. Some examples of past programs are topic-focused workshops, local Agile conferences, and academic research projects. Our current programs are listed below. The primary requirement for any program is that it supports the values, goals, and purpose of the Agile Alliance: a) To provide an unbiased forum within which the community can freely work to discuss, promote, and improve agile development processes; b) To encourage scientific research in current and potential uses of agile processes; c) To share information… -
Agile Alliance Home
29 Apr 2009 | 11:04 pmWondering what agile software development is, start here. Agile practitioners can login to this site to find articles and keep track of agile events and news. Join the over 4000 supporters of agile development become a member Join now! Interested in learning more about participating in future Agile conferences, click here Agile 2009—Chicago, USA Previous Conference Sites -
Public Resources
17 Feb 2009 | 12:32 amAgile Times Newsletter The Agile Times newsletter was our member newsletter written by and for members from 2003 to 2005. Past issues are available for download here. The newer e-magazine Agile Development for members only was produced through Summer 2007. Agile User Groups This page contain an index of independent agile user groups worldwide. Application forms for support for user groups can be found here. Carnival of the Agilists Agile happenings in the blogosphere. Agile Journal The Agile Journal publishes original content articles on a wide variety of Agile topics and is directed by Liz… -
Agile Development
4 Jun 2008 | 5:23 pmDownload Agile Magazine The old Agile Times Download Sample AgileDevelopment Magazine was published by Agile Alliance on a quarterly basis from Sprint 2006 until 2007 Summer. Its authors share successes and challenges with Agile projects, explain various methods and tools, and provide insights into new research. What is agile software development? AgileDevelopment was delivered quarterly as a downloadable PDF file. It doesn’t need to be printed out; you can read it easily on your computer screen. And you want to use it on your computer screen, because it is highly interactive. That… -
Next To Map
19 May 2008 | 12:37 pmJoin the Agile Community With more than 4261 members located around the globe, the Agile Alliance is driven by the values and principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development We support those who explore and apply Agile principles and practices to make the software industry productive, humane, and sustainable.
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Google News: Agile
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Video Shows Agile MJ Two Days Before Death - Hollywood.com
2 Jul 2009 | 2:25 pmVideo Shows Agile MJ Two Days Before DeathHollywood.com released by Michael Jackson's would-be concert promoters AEG Live and obtained by CNN, shows an agile, healthy-looking Jackson rehearsing just two days and more » -
No Easy Road to Agile Cultural Change - InfoQ.com
2 Jul 2009 | 9:02 amNo Easy Road to Agile Cultural ChangeInfoQ.comA number of commentators have recently commented on the challenges of implementing a change to an Agile culture, with a common thread running through their and more » -
Agile FT targets microfinance with new product set - IBS Publishing (subscription)
2 Jul 2009 | 8:44 amIBS Publishing (subscription)Agile FT targets microfinance with new product setIBS Publishing (subscription)Agile Financial Technologies, a UAE-based software provider for the insurance, banking and financial services sectors, has added a new offering to its and more » -
Mr. Clean Autodry Car Wash System - A Pakistan News
2 Jul 2009 | 8:00 amA Pakistan NewsMr. Clean Autodry Car Wash SystemA Pakistan Newsis name of product which is used to wash the car and dry it within a few minutes. Now you have better thing to do and do not need to spend countless hours and more » -
Social networking tools touted for software development - Computerworld
2 Jul 2009 | 7:49 amSocial networking tools touted for software developmentComputerworld"It's very much akin to agile," Olofsen said. Transparency is provided on development activities because changes to code show up in the feed, he added. and more »
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WordPress Tag: Agile
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SCRUM funciona mejor con la Fundación Symbian
2 Jul 2009 | 7:52 amDurante los últimos años es cada vez mas habitual ,y aceptado como buena practica, el uso de SCRUM como metodología de organización de equipos de desarrollo de software. Nosotros, en la fundación Symbian, usamos SCRUM en el equipo que genera los “kits” de desarrollo como el pdk. Por esta razón, recientemente he estado reflexionando sobre cual es la mejor metodología de dirección de equipos y proyectos si estas trabajando con plataformas Symbian. Diseñado para el cambio En mi opinión, una de las ventajas principales de SCRUM, sobre el método mas tradicional de… -
Continuous Improvement & Risk
1 Jul 2009 | 11:28 pmI witnessed an interesting pattern today while running Boris Gloger’s “The Ball Game” exercise with a team. The basic idea is to iterate a team activity, stopping to make improvements each iteration. The idea is to practice and measure the impact of continuous improvement on team performance of a task. In general, the team did as you might expect: the first iteration things were pretty rough and their performance wasn’t very good. In subsequent iterations, their performance continued to steadily improve until they were nearly perfect at peforming the task. Here is what… -
Scrum: Liste de lectures / Reading List
1 Jul 2009 | 8:41 pmScrum: The Better Projects Scrum Reading List Les bases Lectures avancées Jalons et cérémonies Les Rôles La gestion des exigences Estimer Planifier les releases Test et qualité Erreurs potentielles Amélioration continue Implémenter scrum Encore plus Posted by Craig Brown -
Agiles 2009!
1 Jul 2009 | 7:23 pmEstamos organizando agiles2009 a realizarse este año en Florianopolis(Brazil), varios disertantes i -
Agile and Lean: Crash Course
1 Jul 2009 | 3:01 pmI’ve just spent the day at an Agile Scotland workshop run by Clarke Ching and Rob Lally, both freelance Agile consultants. The workshop was titled Agile and Lean Crash and aimed to provide an introduction to the basic Agile principles as well as some of the more popular agile methodologies such as Scrum and XP. About 20 folks were at the session; mostly developers / techies (as expected), but a few project managers and a tester, which was good for different perspectives. Rob started the day with some real life Agile ‘war stories’ from some of his previous work on projects in…
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WordPress Tag: Scrum
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SCRUM funciona mejor con la Fundación Symbian
2 Jul 2009 | 7:52 amDurante los últimos años es cada vez mas habitual ,y aceptado como buena practica, el uso de SCRUM como metodología de organización de equipos de desarrollo de software. Nosotros, en la fundación Symbian, usamos SCRUM en el equipo que genera los “kits” de desarrollo como el pdk. Por esta razón, recientemente he estado reflexionando sobre cual es la mejor metodología de dirección de equipos y proyectos si estas trabajando con plataformas Symbian. Diseñado para el cambio En mi opinión, una de las ventajas principales de SCRUM, sobre el método mas tradicional de… -
Scrum: Liste de lectures / Reading List
1 Jul 2009 | 8:41 pmScrum: The Better Projects Scrum Reading List Les bases Lectures avancées Jalons et cérémonies Les Rôles La gestion des exigences Estimer Planifier les releases Test et qualité Erreurs potentielles Amélioration continue Implémenter scrum Encore plus Posted by Craig Brown -
Making agile the easy choice
1 Jul 2009 | 11:18 amEver try to convince a manager to adopt an agile project approach and failed? That happened to me recently. A new manager came onto the project and pulled out his MS Project clone. “All we have to do is plug our deliverables and tasks into this program and I’ll be able to track the project’s progress.”, he said. I smiled at him and asked if he had heard of Scrum. When he said no I started explaining the methodology to him. After two sentences he stopped me and said “I’ve worked like that sometime ago in the 90s and it didn’t work then.” That, as… -
O que faz Scrum funcionar?
1 Jul 2009 | 8:06 amEssa semana, depois de dias cansativos de trabalho, ouvi um comentário interessante sobre o que faz Scrum funcionar. Eu não estava com energia suficiente para conversar sobre o assunto, mas fiquei com um espinho na cabeça, grande o suficiente para me forçar a blogar depois de tanto tempo. O comentário? “Scrum funciona porque faz as pessoas ficarem com vergonha”. Ouvi isso de alguém que sabe e pensa no que fala. A justificativa básica fincava pé na “vergonha” de não entregar – publicamente – software funcionando, de não cumprir – publicamente… -
Binding for the flanker
1 Jul 2009 | 2:40 amHere is a New Zealand coaching video which shows how the angle of the flanker’s bind. The rugby technique is great, the method of coaching better! Loads of questions and player involvement.
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Radiowalker: Tech Business Beat
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Neil Young Uses JIRA: The LincVolt Project
24 Jun 2009 | 12:03 pmAlthough I rarely re-blog Atlassian news, I can’t help myself this time. This deserves more exposure. Why? Three compelling reasons: 1. The LincVolt project is the coolest clean technology car project. Its mission is to get a 1959 Lincoln Continental to try to break a 100 mile-per-gallon barrier. This car weighs 2.5 tons. I would be satisfied just sitting in a ‘59 Lincoln, let alone getting 100 mpg. This is simply a fantastic, ambitious project using a gorgeous battleship of a car. 2. The car runs Atlassian JIRA, our bug and issue tracker, right on the console. Yes, folks, you can… -
The Musicians of Atlassian
10 Jun 2009 | 7:54 pmOne of the great things here at Atlassian is we have some wonderful musicians. Here’s a window into this side of Atlassian life. Matt Ryall, Soren Harner, and Jed Wesley-Smith playing in Sydney Soren Harner runs all our software development. He also runs marathons. Somehow he finds time to be an incredible guitarist and what really pisses me off is he has a voice that makes women rip their clothes off. I have not actually seen women do this. I have, however, seen women consider it. Soren also makes playing music seem so natural and easy. He is one of those guys who knows 325 songs and… -
Living with Cancer in Silicon Valley II: Survival Tips from a Hardened Cancer Dude
4 Jun 2009 | 9:05 amAlthough I have a reasonable excuse for not blogging since March, my Kids have become my conscience telling me to update people. Facebook and Twitter are for updates, so instead, here are my ways of surviving the ordeal of cancer. Originally I blogged because I joined Atlassian. My Inner Writer Nerd also wanted to come out. Then I crossed the line from business topics with my Cancer 2.0: the Killer App blog. No surprise, a lot more people read this. Two lessons: 1) Speak from the Heart and it’s way more interesting. 2) Business colleagues accept one crossing the line from business to… -
Living with Cancer in Silicon Valley
5 Mar 2009 | 11:47 amEnso, a symbol of Zen Buddhism My cancer returned Monday. In not exactly a subtle way. I have two tumors, one of which is 11×8 centimeters. They are messing with my left psoas muscle which explains all the back and leg pain I have been having. Being the occasional idiot I am about ignoring pain, I waited too long to get medication. Now I am on an intense mixture: the morphine is the platform, the percocet dulls the spikes, and the neurontin is nothing less than a bomb going off, so thankfully it’s reserved for sleep, something I have not had for weeks. This is my life. I am living… -
A Different Kind of Software Company: What Matters: Three Lessons
2 Mar 2009 | 2:26 pmGetting in touch with my Inner Jazz` Vinnie Mirchandani, fellow Enterprise Irregular was gracious to invite me to guest blog reflecting on Atlassian hitting a new milestone: $100 million in all-time sales since inception. It’s not about the milestone, as reaching 14,706 customers as of today is more fulfilling. It’s about creating a different kind of software company. Vinnie asked me what’s been fun about the journey, and truthfully I failed and wrote this more serious, reflective post. I was able to scrounge up this photo from our last Christmas party which has become a…
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Atlassian Developer Blog
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Agile With A Remote Product Owner
2 Jul 2009 | 11:11 amWe Are From Mars All agile methodologies stress the need of co-locating development with the customer's representative - the Product Owner - or at least, having them in close proximity - both in time and in space. Our team seems to be the exact opposite of what "the agile way" requires - we are located on the other side of the planet (Gdansk, Poland) from the company headquarters (Sydney, Australia). This means we could just as well be located on Mars. Actually, one could argue that outside of the narrow communication windows (early morning and late at night), communication latency between… -
Make Your Code Agile: Refactoring
2 Jul 2009 | 10:47 amFirst, my definition of refactoring: Refactoring is improving code without changing the features it implements. That's all. If you're refactoring, you're not fixing bugs, you're not improving performance and you not increasing robustness. Refactoring is simply improving the design of the code, while ensuring that it still works the same, warts and all. Pointy haired bosses the world over froth at the mouth to hear such things. Veins pop out in their temples. You mean the business value of the software stays the same but the cost to the business goes up? I didn't say that. If you measure… -
Help us Integrate Confluence with Alfresco
1 Jul 2009 | 6:10 pmAt Atlassian we're always looking for ways to expand the utility and functionality of our products. Sometimes this means we develop that code ourselves, and sometimes it means our community fills in the blanks. Such is the case with a new integration we've been working on with Alfresco, an open-source content management company, and Sourcesense, a mutual partner of Atlassian's and Alfresco's. In a nutshell, we're integrating Alfresco with Confluence to bring OpenSearch to Confluence wiki pages and to embed Alfresco-stored documents into Confluence, among other things. One of the best things… -
Agile Project Management With Virtual Index Cards
30 Jun 2009 | 9:26 amIndex Cards have become an indispensable tool for a software development team practicing agile. There are a host of good sites with information on strategies for and benefits of utilizing index cards. Agile teams use Index Cards for a variety of reasons, including: helping with iteration planning assigning tasks and then tracking developer assignments recording task estimates as one component of the team's Information Radiator. reminders of the conversations between customers and developers around the definition of user stories. The cards are an excellent visual representation of the health… -
Hamcrest saves your soul - Now with less suffering!
29 Jun 2009 | 11:31 amIn a previous post I described how Hamcrest can save your soul. After writing that, it was pointed out that you probably don't need to suffer so much boiler-plate to save your soul. With that thought I set out to write the deeplyIsEqual matcher. The result is the DeepIsEqual Matcher. Using it is pretty easy. In that previous post I described the Matcher for comparing lightsabers, LightsaberIsEqual. We no longer need that. Now we can simply do assertThat(anakinsLightsaber, is(deeplyEqualTo(lukesFirstLightsaber)); No extra boilerplate is needed and we still get all the benefits of only seeing…
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Agile Software Development
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Danube Technologies and Tasktop Team Up
26 Jun 2009 | 4:04 amBellevue, Wash., June 24, 2009 Danube Technologies, Inc., ( http://www.danube.com ), the leader in software and training for the Scrum method of agile software development, and Tasktop Technologies ( http://tasktop.com ), creators of Eclipse(TM) Mylyn and the task-focused interface, today anno ... -
Sonar 1.9 Integrates its Own Source Code Analyser
26 Jun 2009 | 3:41 amSonar, the enterprise Open Source platform to manage Java code quality, provides its own source analyser in version 1.9. -
Embarcadero All-Access Gets a Boost wit Latest Database Change Management Tool
26 Jun 2009 | 3:29 amSAN FRANCISCO – June 24, 2009 – Embarcadero Technologies is increasing the value of its All-Access tool chest with a new version of its popular database change management software. Released today, Change Manager 5.1 helps database administrators (DBAs) and developers by automating comple ... -
Electric Cloud and Coverity Announce Software Integrity Partnership
26 Jun 2009 | 3:23 amSunnyvale, Calif., June 17, 2009 — Coverity®, the software integrity company and Electric Cloud® the leading provider of software production management (SPM) solutions, today announced a partnership to help companies improve the integrity of their business-critical software. This partn ... -
A (Mostly) Agile Java Day at Jazoon
26 Jun 2009 | 2:09 amMethods & Tools is the sponsor of a large number of software development conferences , but I cannot find the time and budget to visit them. This year I managed to find some time after the publication of my summer issue to visit Wednesday the Jazoon , an important Java event located in Zurich. B ...
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AgileVoices.com
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enthiosys agile product management: Living in an Agile World: The Role of Product Management When Development Goes Agile
2 Jul 2009 | 7:57 amThis Kindle e-book is written jointly by Pragmatic Marketing’s Steve Johnson and Enthiosys’ Luke Hohmann and Rich Mironov. It discusses the role of product manager in an Agile development environment.read more -
Tom Hume: Sprint 41: review and retrospective
2 Jul 2009 | 6:11 am"In Sprint 41, I invented the bun... I invented the bun, in Sprint 41..."read more -
Mark Needham: F#: Pattern matching with the ':?' operator
2 Jul 2009 | 6:10 amI've been doing a bit more reading of the Fake source code and one interesting thing which I came across which I hadn't seen was an active pattern which was making use of the ':?' operator to match the input type against .NET types.read more -
NetObjectives: Kayaking: How Rationale Aids Experience
2 Jul 2009 | 6:08 amI have been espousing an understanding of principles for quite some time now. While I do believe that one typically does not truly understand something until they do it, I believe we often look in the wrong area for things and that being told what to look at (in the form of principles or rationale) can steer us into better action quickly. I recently had an experience of not being told... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more!read more -
Agile Chronicles by VersionOne: Why are you Failing with Agile?
2 Jul 2009 | 5:58 amOkay...read more
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ScrumPlant.com
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Ed Gibbs - Musings of a Software Development Manager: Coding Katas
2 Jul 2009 | 5:02 pmread more -
Agile Software Development - Kelly Waters: Themes in Agile Software Development
2 Jul 2009 | 2:42 pmAgile software development teams often use -
Agile Software Development - Kelly Waters: The Power of a Whiteboard
2 Jul 2009 | 2:42 pmAgile software development teams often use low-tech, manual methods for trackiread more -
Agile Software Development - Kelly Waters: 'All About Agile' Seminar
2 Jul 2009 | 2:41 pmI've spent the last 2 years or so reaching out via my blog and posting all sorts of comments and information about my experiences with agile software deread more -
Agile Software Development - Kelly Waters: 3 Reasons Why I Wouldn't Do Agile Software Development
2 Jul 2009 | 2:41 pmAgile software development has been a revelatread more
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From the Editor of Methods & Tools
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A (Mostly) Agile Java Day at Jazoon
26 Jun 2009 | 1:34 amMethods & Tools is the sponsor of a large number of software development conferences, but I cannot find the time and budget to visit them. This year I managed to find some time after the publication of my summer issue to visit Wednesday the Jazoon, an important Java event located in Zurich. Besides the global morning [...] -
Should Developers Come Only from Mars but Project Managers from Venus?
23 Jun 2009 | 12:42 amOnce upon a time was the “software crisis” that persuaded people to “engineer” software in a 1968 NATO conference. Methods were created to structure the requirements and the software development process. They use models to define more precisely the requirements and the target system. They had a top-down approach that was aimed at increasing management [...] -
Summer 2009 issue of Methods & Tools
22 Jun 2009 | 1:40 amMethods & Tools is a free e-newsletter for software developers, testers and project managers. Summer 2009 issue’s content: * Responsibility Driven Design with Mock Objects * Agile Coding and Testing * How to Quantify Quality: Finding Scales of Measure * Scrum Product Owner Guide * TDD, FDD and BDD Compared * Open-Source Messaging Servers 60 pages of software development knowledge that you [...] -
My 10 + 1 Favorite Unit Testing Articles
16 Jun 2009 | 1:22 amThis is a (personal) list of articles dealing with unit testing that I like. I have chosen to include material that is longer than the usual (short) blog posting. I encourage readers to give more objectivity to this subjective set by submitting in the comments what they preferred ;o) Test Flexibly with AspectJ and Mock Objects Automation [...] -
Another Suitor for Borland?
11 Jun 2009 | 3:16 amAccording to Reuters, Micro Focus, which agreed in May to buy Borland, said on Monday that Borland had received a preliminary non-binding indication of interest from an unnamed financial buyer. The price offered would be $ 1.20 versus the $ 1 offered by Micro Focus. If the transaction is not approved by the shareholders, Borland [...]
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david rasch -- technology. business. life.
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Happy Clayton – Father’s Day 2009
25 Jun 2009 | 4:32 pmHappy Clayton – Father’s Day 2009 -
Day in the life of Clayton
6 Jun 2009 | 11:46 amLibby video productions comes out with another winner! Day in the life of Clayton -
Eden Platform Gets You More Search Engine Traffic
16 May 2009 | 6:40 pmI recently had the distinct pleasure of taking Preation’s Eden Platform for a test drive. The Preation team together with its Eden Platform make sure that your website will continue to deliver long after the initial setup. Through the platform you can add content, contact forms, calendars, navigation, look and feel, and media all through an intuitive user interface. Move pages, content, and articles around using drag-and-drop interface. Eden Platform is one heck of a CMS, but that’s not the best of it. Eden Platform integrates throughout the entire process information about every… -
Protected: Happy Mothers Day
10 May 2009 | 5:57 pmThis post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: -
Happy Easter
12 Apr 2009 | 4:04 pmHappy Easter
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Agile Web Operations
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Behavior Driven Ops, Kanban vs. Scrum and a new upcoming Monitoring and Trending Tool
25 Jun 2009 | 1:41 pmTesting Dash Metrics with Cucumber (Bradley Taylor) - A short article showing off a Cucumber feature for monitoring with Nagios. Kanban vs. Scrum (Henrik Kniberg) - A great, 26 page long PDF about the similarities and differences between Scrum and Kanban. Absolutely worth reading! Reconnoiter (Theo Schlossnagle) - Theo and his OmniTI Labs are working on a new monitoring and trending application - a combination of Nagios, Cacti and the like with the goal to ease administration and scale efficiently. No releases yet but looks promising. Related posts:Monitoring tools essentials: Munin… -
Setting up a test database on a ruby on rails continuous integration server using SQL instead of schema.rb
18 Jun 2009 | 1:46 pmFor developing our Ruby on Rails based web site, we usually take regular SQL dumps from our production servers (of course, anonymizing sensitive customer data along the way). Always having a fresh dump allows us to be on the safe side when writing database migrations. Having an up to date development database enables us to run our test suite as well; it’s just a matter of rake db:test:prepare to get our test database up-to-date. So far, so good. Due to our use of some MySQL specific stuff (namely full-text-indices), which are not supported by the database agnostic schema.rb, we’re… -
Too Busy to Blog
14 Jun 2009 | 12:41 amI’ve been busier than a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest the past few weeks. And because of this I haven’t been keeping up with my weekly posts. But yesterday, after getting through the guilt trip, I realized that I was missing more than just blogging. I was missing my weekly retrospectives and thereby losing focus of my priorities. Currently, I am an “Army of One” so the only retrospective I’ve been conducting is with me, myself and you - the reader. Not writing about and contemplating my experiences, successes and failures from the week’s work… -
webrat: Automated Acceptance Testing with RSpec or Cucumber
11 Jun 2009 | 1:14 pmRecently, I was looking deeper into how we could add some automated acceptance tests to our Ruby on Rails based website. We’re using RSpec since quite a while now for TDD, but doing some high level acceptance tests was not on our agenda so far. DRY Cucumber Scenarios The new cool kid on the block is Cucumber. One of its main features is that you can describe acceptance tests in nearly plain English (or any other language) simplifying discussions with the product managers and other, non-technical stake holders. I’m really impressed by the ease, with which you can describe DRY… -
1st Birthday: Best of Agile Web Operations
4 Jun 2009 | 1:37 pmIt’s time to say “Thank you” to all of you, our loyal readers. Thanks for reading, commenting and subscribing to our posts for exactly one year now. That’s right, Agile Web Operations is now one year old. I can hardly put into words how great it is to have you with us! 103 posts and 113 comments. That’s the result of our first year. And, exactly 200 of you have subscribed to our RSS feed - an excellent choice. For all of you who joined recently (and to remind you veterans), check out the five most read posts: Puppet or Capistrano - Use the Right Tool for the Job…
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The Agilebuddy Blog
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Coping with change on Scrum projects (part I)
2 Jul 2009 | 7:04 amIntroduction Most folks don't like change. I know I don't. But one things certain, adopting an Agile approach to software development requires much change in an organization. Whether it's corporate culture, roles or process, as an organization switching to Agile you're going to have to learn cope with change. This series deals with how various functions in the Agile organization are expected to change in order that teams new to Agile can learn what to expect and better adapt to this new and invigorating environment. This week covers the changes one can expect for the Customer and Product… -
Measuring velocity is not enough to determine team productivity
30 Jun 2009 | 12:59 pmIntroduction Another interesting question was brought up in a LinkedIn discussion thread: "Is velocity the right approach to measure productivity of team members working in Scrum. If not, then how can productivity of team members be measured in Scrum?" Here are my thought on this topic. The purpose of velocity Like burndown charts, velocity is just another metric which the team can use to reach what I believe is the ultimate goal – sustainable throughput. Velocity in my opinion, is not a metric for determining productivity. Productivity or team efficiency is difficult to measure… -
Burndown Charts - It's not about staying below the line
25 Jun 2009 | 11:35 amIntroduction I recently participated in a Scrum development discussion thread on Yahoo Groups where one member new to Scrum asked the following: "Our burndown chart's remaining work line always goes up. As a Scrum Master, what do I have to do to make it go down?" This question, surprisingly, generated a lot of response from the community. I found it puzzling to see how adamant some were to introduce solutions to get the remaining work line to go below the estimated work line. Goal I believe that the underlying goal should not necessarily be about staying below the estimated time... -
Scrum falls short in at least one area in my opinion
23 Jun 2009 | 11:30 amMany of us have come to love Scrum, including me. Scrum has been a huge success overall and has turned many a development team around and for the better. Yet in my opinion, I think Scrum falls short in at least one area. Concept to Cash Firstly, it's commonly accepted that Scrum does not consider the whole life-cycle i.e. it's a great framework for helping development teams tame the development life cycle but it does not tackle all areas from "concept to cash". Lean and Lean with Kanban certainly appears to be an alternative to Scrum or at least coupled... -
NASCAR. Adjustability gets you the winners flag every time
18 Jun 2009 | 8:55 amIntroduction Always on the lookout for good analogies to help get my point across, I happened to tune into the Nascar roundup a few weeks ago. Jimmie Johnson was being interviewed about the upcoming event. As I am sure you can now guess I am a Nascar fan. Most of my friends and colleagues can’t understand this because from the outside looking in, it’s just a bunch of cars going round and round on the same track – what could be more boring than that. Quite the contrary however, Nascar racing is anything but ordinary. It’s a sport that requires...
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The Agile Program Manager
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The Final Countdown
10 Jun 2009 | 10:12 amAt a certain point in every program, you start to count down the number of days left until the inevitable collision with that big, immovable deadline. It's a scary and exciting time. Months of work by many different teams are about to culminate in a single, pivotal moment - say, for example, in the form of live demos during the CEO's keynote speech at your company's first major user conference.Interesting things happen during the final countdown. Teams move into hyperdrive - fueled by caffeine, pizza and cupcakes - and show how fast they really can sprint. Project managers start deploying… -
Wiki: $5. Issue Tracker: $5. Agility: Priceless
20 Apr 2009 | 8:56 pmI've talked about the coolness of Confluence (Atlassian's enterprise wiki product) as a program management tool in a previous post. If you read that and thought "if only my company would shell out for a decent wiki..." or if you're frustrated with your current bug tracking tool, here's some news to make you happy.This week you can buy a 5-user license for two of Atlassian's products - Confluence and JIRA - for $5 each. These are fully functional versions of JIRA (awesome issue tracker) and Confluence, including a year of support, and you can renew them for $5.And if that's not enough to make… -
Training - Now Available in "Lite"
15 Apr 2009 | 3:24 amHow do you provide useful training to technical managers in a timely, lightweight way? I don't have the perfect answer, but here are some ideas I've seen work well.Book ClubWe've been experimenting with this idea for the last several months at Atlassian. The engineering team leads & managers meet once a week on the downstairs sofas to discuss a few chapters of an Agile methodology book (we have upstairs sofas too, which are closer for most of us, but the ambience upstairs is lacking a certain je ne sais quoi) . We all read the selected chapters during the week, so at the meeting we can… -
Going Agile with your Program Risks
24 Mar 2009 | 2:17 amYou're managing a program. You've got risks. How do you identify, plan for, and track those risks in an agile way?A bit of inspiration from Agile development can help. Think of risk planning like product release planning. You have a high-level plan for the release, made up of a series of iterations. You know a lot more about the next few iterations than you do about the later stages of the release, so your next 1-2 iteration plans are more detailed and accurate than the overall release plan.For your program, you can create a high-level risk register - complete with probability & impact… -
An Inconvenient Empathy
10 Mar 2009 | 2:00 amA few years ago I was a risk-averse project manager with a pretty big team of developers and responsibility for the company's cash-cow product. This product was similar to many software cash-cows - a large number of globally distributed users; a growing list of features being used in all kinds of ways we never intended; and a complex legacy codebase. There were other product teams at this company, but there wasn't much integration between our products at that stage. Getting two of our products to run on the same machine was considered an interesting but academic exercise, and we were all…
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Ative at Work
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Reboot Your Management
26 Jun 2009 | 6:05 amHow would you rebuild a country after a world war? How would you reboot your management?This was the topic for my presentation at the Reboot conference.It concerned Deming's 14 principles for management, the humanistic, long-term thinking, keep learning, use the scientific method, and build from quality philosophy, that helped shape companies such as Toyota and Honda..Researching the background of his work, it was interesting to see how the World-War 2 Training Within Industry principles played a big role in shaping his ideas and how its focus on operating from a basis of scarcity - such… -
What is a Truly Lean Company? - Deming Distilled
7 May 2009 | 6:12 amDeming's work is the foundation of the Toyota Production System and modern-day lean. I recently conducted a workshop his 14 points for management. One exercise was to group them to get to their essence. Here is the the result:“Practise engaged leadership” - hands-on and collaborative (points 7 and 2 – institute leadership and lead the transformation)“Improve constantly” (points 1, 5 and 3 – provide jobs by building quality in and constantly improving the system)“Look at the organisation as a whole” (points 9, 4 – end silos and look at total cost)“Develop you… -
New Lean Reading List: Shingo Prize Winners Announced
31 Mar 2009 | 5:46 amThe recipient's of this year's Shingo Prize have been announced. The Research and Professional Publication Prize category is a great reading list for new lean books:Steven Spear - Chasing the Rabbit. A book on how to catch up with your lean competiors. HBR review here.Mark Graban - Lean Hospitals. The book by the productive author of leanblog.org.John Shook - Managing to Learn. Focuses on Toyota's visual A3 management tool.Professor Peter Hines; Dr. Pauline Found; Gary Griffiths; and Richard Harrison - Staying Lean: Thriving, Not Just Surviving.Jeffrey K. Liker, Michael Hoseus and… -
Improve your IT-organisation with Deming's 14 points
12 Dec 2008 | 2:20 amI have written an introduction to Deming's 14 points and how they can help you improve your IT-organisation. It is a 15-page PDF in Danish. You can download it here: Ud af krisen - http://www.ative.dk/media/989/ud%20af%20krisen%20-%20ative%20-%20a4.pdf Enjoy - and please send me feedback on how to improve it. :-) All the best, Martin -
Out of the Crisis - Deming's 14 Points
5 Nov 2008 | 5:57 amIn a time where so many are excusing their failure with externalities and saying "it's the crisis" we need leadership and entrepreneurship more than ever. We are in a time of creative destruction and it is precisely these moments that offer great opportunities to those who seek out the new ways of success. In the early 1980es, the West faced a similar situation. We were blaming our failure on the Japanese manufacturers "dumping" products - selling below cost, because "no-one could create products so cheaply". Inefficient companies were threatened.
