Why Agile Became Meaningless
Uncle Bob recently wrote a post about The True Corruption of Agile. I think it will be a defining post for me because, as I’ll explain in my next post,...
View ArticleThe "Year of Code" Director is Your Boss
There was some hubbub a few months ago when it was revealed the Executive Director of the UK’s Year of Code initiative can’t code [link]. Not that...
View ArticleResults Are Not the Point?
The phrase “results are not the point” often confuses people new to Lean thinking. It confused the shit out of me, not having really understood it even...
View ArticleThe myth of the brilliant jerk
Do not tolerate brilliant jerks. The cost to teamwork is too high. – Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO So I was all prepared to write about how much I...
View ArticleAdjustable standing desks should be mandatory
At CCP’s Iceland office, everyone’s desk is able to adjust into a sitting or standing position. I don’t know who decided this perk. It must have been a...
View ArticleThere is no essence of Agile
real agile is: talk to the users directly, know their pain point, address it, repeat. -someone on Twitter who I disagree with In many conversations...
View ArticleResults Are Not the Point, Follow Up
In response to a previous post explaining the phrase “Results are not the point“, commenter RenRen Gabás says: Both approaches have their own place....
View ArticleShould a team be able to abort a sprint?
After my second retrospective on a new project, I unloaded some pretty harsh criticism about what we were building. I felt it was a “solution in search...
View ArticleOptimize Iteration Length for Feedback
If there is one theme that is weaved through all of Agile’s principles and practices, it is feedback. TDD. Pair programming. Continuous delivery. Stories....
View Articlegoless Benchmarks
I benchmarked how goless performs under different backends (goless is a library that provides a Go-like concurrency model for Python, on top of stackless,...
View ArticleWhat Does Your Product Owner Own?
In a previous post, I came down hard on Agile leaders that don’t program. Now I’ll turn my sights to another part of the Scrum trinity: the Product Owner....
View ArticleEveryone should take vacation at the same time
Throughout my career I’ve always seen people struggle with taking vacation. People are too wrapped up in what they’re doing. Managers can’t allow...
View ArticleYou must manage what you can’t measure
We all know the quote: You can’t manage what you can’t measure. The quote is often incorrectly attributed to W. Edwards Deming. Thank...
View ArticleA Short Letter to a Unit Testing Newcomer
One of my friends asked how to get started with unit testing and Test Driven Development and figured I could write a short post. I also mention TDD a few...
View ArticleThe low status of software engineers
A couple weeks ago I read an article by Michael Church titled “How the Other Half Works: an Adventure in the Low Status of Software Engineers“. It is the...
View ArticleHire talented people and get out of their way?
Whenever I need inspiration for a blog post, I check my LinkedIn feed. I am bound to find a stupid inspirational quote. Today’s is: In most cases being...
View ArticleCan you quantify trust?
In a previous article, commenter Robert Kist asked: How are you going to judge if people trust you – what would your indicators be, if you decide to...
View ArticleMetaprogramming With the Type Function
In my book, Practical Maya Programming with Python, I use Python’s type function for dynamically creating custom Maya nodes based on specifications, such as...
View ArticleJapanese vs. Western models of decision making
I was reading a book about The Toyota Way last year (sorry, can’t remember which) and something that stuck with me was a section on Japanese versus Western...
View ArticleTwo weeks is the worst sprint length
Mike Cohn over at Mountain Goat Software says this in My Primary Criticism of Scrum: In today’s version of Scrum, many teams have become overly...
View Article
