Having spent the second half of my software engineering career doing ‘agile’ development, I think I’ve spent more time trying to convince people what agile is not than explaining to the uninitiated what it is. Since the so-called manifesto was published in 2001, the whole thing’s been so abused, monetized and co-opted that, for all intents and… Read More The molten core of agile
When launching a new business or a new initiative, I see lots of teams make the mistake of obsessing over what process they are going to use to manage the software production efforts. They start, typically, with some ‘textbook’ example of SCRUM©… this quickly leads to obsessive debate over what ticketing tools to use… which then devolves… Read More Build culture not process
Serious problems require a serious tool… Meetings should center on concisely written reports on paper, not fragmented bulleted talking points projected up on the wall. -Edward Tufte If every software meeting that you attend is being driven by a PowerPoint deck, don’t kid yourself: you’ve got yourself a serious problem. This is a sign of an… Read More Management by PowerPoint
William Edwards Deming was sent to Japan in the early 1950’s and propagated his ideas about quality control and production process throughout Japanese industry. There’s a wealth of wisdom in Deming’s work, albeit much of it industrially focused, but I’m particularly fond of his “Seven Deadly Diseases” of management (with my comments): Lack of constancy… Read More Deming’s Seven Deadly Diseases
Brett W. Green's On the Contrary 