The bliss of flow is something countless other developers and I work hard to create every day. The effort of our mentally taxing work relaxes, and magic happens as we lose ourselves in this wondrous state. Though, as the years went on, I concluded th...

Quite often, we find ourselves in jobs or roles that don’t make sense to us. It could be because they aren’t defined or because the definition always seems to change. How can you thrive if you don’t know how to succeed? One way you can change that is...

There is enough written about effective and more so ineffective stand-ups. This time I want to explore the idea of what happens after a stand-up is over. Specifically, the moment stand-up ends, what happens right after. There are two styles I want to...

Early in my career constraints were something that filled me with dread. They spoke only to what I could not do. They held me back. They left me bound and unable to see a path forward. Constraints are all around us. They are simply a boundary or limi...

I often think about where large transformations go wrong in organizations. I've been through several "agile" flavored ones, and at this point, I think they're mostly doomed to fail. That doesn't mean that pursuing agility is a waste of time, but ther...

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. Junior developers get stuck on problems that a more seni...

Almost everywhere does something like Scrum these days or at least is familiar with it. Having said that, if you survey folks---and I have, you’ll find that most regard Scrum with ambivalence or animosity. Aside from consultants and trainers, of cour...

It was about three years before I saw a retrospective that didn’t have the basic three-column setup. You know, the one where you have +, -, Change. Maybe yours is start, stop, continue. That was seven years ago, and I’d say 95% of the time that three...

About a decade ago, a book called The Phoenix Project swept through the IT community. It is an incredibly relatable bit of fiction about a software shop that ultimately redeems itself. Most people who read the book came away with the idea that DevOps...

I get asked pretty regularly by people about how to go about building a portfolio site. My controversial answer is, “Don’t.” What I want to talk about today is why I recommend limiting your time making a portfolio site and using that time on other th...