Motivated Individuals

November 14, 2008

As agile approaches the mainstream, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the core principles, especially this one: Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done. If agile is to apply broadly, we can’t reserve it just for those projects that [...]

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A Common, but Bad, Idea

November 13, 2008

Please don’t do this:

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Risk

November 7, 2008

If you’re an IT executive, which is less risky? Investing a little bit in an effective agile adoption, something that’s been proven at other companies to improve cash flow, increase productivity, and grow revenues…or…hunkering down and cutting costs, knowing that at this time when your business needs you the most you’ll be less productive than [...]

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Agile Architecture – Neither BDUF nor Chaos

November 3, 2008

I’m often asked how architecture works on agile software projects. It’s a big question, but the core answer, I think, is this: Neither a big, detailed architecture up front nor no architecture at all is a good approach. The former leads to waste. The up-front architecture tends to support features that turn out never to [...]

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Free Agile Product Management Seminar – Nov 11, Denver

October 30, 2008

I’m hosting a free seminar on Tuesday, November 11 from 1:00-2:30 PM in the Denver Tech Center area. Please join me there and spread the word to others who might be interested. Here’s a brief description:

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How to Invest Less and Make More From Your Software Projects

October 14, 2008

As the saying goes, “Cash is king.” It doesn’t matter how good your P&L or balance sheet looks or how good the business case for your project is, if you don’t have enough cash every month to pay the bills, you won’t stay in business. With the economy tightening, then, companies are desperately trying to [...]

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The Most Useful Release Burn-up I’ve Seen Yet

October 9, 2008

I often advise teams against using a release burn-up (or burn-down) chart because I’ve seen too many managers try to use them as a stick to beat the team with their original pre-project release estimate. Since velocity changes from iteration to iteration, the size of the release needs to change, as well. Jim Shore has [...]

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Trust

October 3, 2008

Esther Derby has a good post this morning about how trust is embedded in a context. She writes, “The sort of trust that you need for a productive working relationship is different from the trust you need for a healthy marriage.” She gives some good examples of what trust means on a work team.

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Kill the Office, or Fix It?

September 24, 2008

A recent essay in Wired says, “The traditional office, meanwhile, remains a black hole of interruptions, procrastination, and soul-crushing politics. According to Gloria Mark, an informatics professor at UC Irvine, the typical office worker is interrupted or switches tasks every three minutes—hardly enough time to accomplish anything of substance.” (via Kathy Sierra) The alternative, according [...]

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Surviving Rewrites

September 8, 2008

It seems like fully half the projects I come across are rewrites in one form or another. It ought to be common knowledge by now that rewrite projects have a very bad track record, but perhaps the bad results are connected to the inordinate attractiveness of “doing it right this time.” The chance to replace [...]

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