A friend of mine asked a group of us for our little sayings that we keep repeating in our heads as we coach organizations and developers. While I have a few tried and true ones, I put together a list of ones on the spot for him based on my experience...
There exists a trait common to most developers and development groups that causes lots of delays and costly mistakes. That trait is when you believe you can figure it out if you have more time.
Today I’m going to make a few people mad, get a few things that have been bothering me out there, and hopefully, get a few folks to try something a little different.
There are a lot of prioritization techniques that exist, and it’s worth getting comfortable with a handful of them. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, so having a few you can use rounds out your ability to prioritize.
I was talking with some friends the other day about the state of our industry, as we often do, and someone mentioned various problematic metaphors that people use. In particular, the metaphor that software teams should work like a surgical team led b...
I’m not a fan of most roadmaps or their usage, but so what? They are a near-universal tool in many companies that awkwardly try to communicate what is going on and their timelines. Despite them turning into vague work-breakdown schedules, there is so...
The alarm goes off in the morning, and as usual, I begin my day by putting on my clothes. Now, I’ve been putting on my clothes for a long time, and I like to do things efficiently, so I put my clothes on in the following order:
User stories are ubiquitous these days as the method of representing work that development teams need to do. Yet, very few groups ever really understand them well enough to get much value out of them. While I still think user stories are an excellent...
For the better part of eight years, I’ve been consulting for the Fortune 100. I thought I’d share some quirky truths I’ve learned along the way. Before I go into them, some clients don’t exhibit these truths, but they’re an exception.
I wrote an article last week about the Theory of Constraints. In particular, I highlighted how variability is probably the biggest enemy you have to a method like that working. So in this article, I’m going to explain a way to help reduce variability...