Archive

Here are all 261 of my posts:

July 2025 (1)
- 29: Value Creation: The Engine Behind Sustainable Growth (0)
June 2025 (1)
- 03: You Know Something’s Off. The 3F Health Check Shows You Where (0)
May 2025 (3)
- 20: AI Isn’t Magic — It’s a Stack (0)
- 13: Bold Predictions or Hype? Tech CEOs on AI’s Impact on Software Development (0)
- 01: Another Silver Bullet? What AI Tools Can Learn from the Last 50 Years of Developer Hype (0)
April 2025 (2)
- 17: What Software Development Can Learn from Double-Entry Bookkeeping (0)
- 09: Disaster, rescue and recovery: Kickstarting delivery (0)
March 2025 (4)
- 25: Choosing the Right Nearshoring Location: 9 Essential Criteria (0)
- 18: No Strategy, No Future: Why Companies That Drift, Sink (0)
- 11: Feel Focus Flow: A Practical Framework for Effective Leadership (0)
- 04: Is Sofia Still a Smart Nearshoring Bet in 2025? (0)
February 2025 (2)
- 25: Forget Agile. Focus on What Works (0)
- 18: Need More Developers? Six Ways to Expand Your Software Team (2)
March 2016 (2)
- 07: Leaders Turn Up (0)
- 07: Software Management Triumvirate: Delivery, Product and Technical (0)
February 2016 (1)
- 01: PDCA – Plan Do Reflect Improve. Um, sorry, I mean Check Act (4)
January 2016 (4)
- 25: Are Sprints Just a Way to Organise Releases? (4)
- 18: Five Reasons Why Decision Makers Don’t (2)
- 12: Contracts do not fix incompetence (1)
- 04: Programmes are more than Big Projects (0)
December 2015 (5)
- 29: Albert Einstein would have liked Retrospectives (0)
- 21: Focus – “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one” (0)
- 14: Shaping a team – Get good people and put them in the right role (0)
- 07: Unfortunately Corporations Equate Weight of Paper with Safety (2)
- 01: User Stories are Experiments (0)
November 2015 (4)
- 24: How to describe your Big Idea in a succinct and compelling way (0)
- 17: Need an unsolvable problem solved? Call in the Development Paratrooper (0)
- 10: Work Item Tracking, to See or Not to See? (0)
- 03: How to Distinguish Between Activity and Queues on a Kanban Board (0)
October 2015 (3)
- 27: Did HeartOfAgile emerge from PDCA? (0)
- 13: A U in UX (0)
- 06: Going back to basics with Agile, what would we find? The Heart of Agile (0)
September 2015 (5)
- 28: Quality is a choice: the case of the Next Generation Apps (0)
- 22: Strong products are backed by “Three-market-forces” (1)
- 15: What is the optimal number of manual testers in a development team? Zero? (5)
- 08: Too Busy to Innovate (0)
- 01: Lead time versus Cycle Time – Untangling the confusion (8)
August 2015 (4)
- 24: Are you leading or just going for a walk? (0)
- 18: Look for Product Owners in the Business (0)
- 10: Make BlackOps development the Corporate Standard – Embrace Microservices (0)
- 04: Employing too many ideas people leads to Zombie Projects (0)
July 2015 (4)
- 27: “Mad, Relentless, Scary, Fun” – my year on Digital Growth (0)
- 20: Delivery Manager – A new role for an Agile world (15)
- 13: Disruptive Innovation is an Illusion Hiding Efficiency (0)
- 06: Programmes are above Projects on the Value Ladder (0)
June 2015 (5)
- 29: Continuous Delivery by Default; Timeboxes by Exception (0)
- 22: Programmes can use more than one method: Kanban, Scrum, XP, BDD, etc (2)
- 15: Product Owner – leader, facilitator or unnecessary overhead? (0)
- 08: Test driven architecture – use your tests to inform architecture (0)
- 01: 35 person-years worth of prototype is a fantastic spec (2)
May 2015 (4)
- 25: #NoEstimates #YesEstimates #NoEstimates #YesEstimates (0)
- 18: I Only Trust Architects That Code (2)
- 11: Scope Creep v Flexible Scope – Undisciplined v Agile (0)
- 05: Choose your Lean-Agile coaches wisely; watch for Organisational Psychopaths (2)
April 2015 (4)
- 27: Deming wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around (1)
- 20: TPM – Project Manager who is technical or technical person who manages? (0)
- 13: How to get Agile experience as a project manager? Just start (1)
- 06: Little’s Law – the basis of Lean and Kanban (11)
March 2015 (5)
- 30: 4Ls Retro Format – Liked, Learned, Lacked, and Longed for (0)
- 23: I hate part time assignments to projects; they challenge WIP limits (0)
- 16: I always work with a “Product Owner”; never a “Scrum Product Owner” (0)
- 09: Don’t use the Formal User Story Format for Minor Modifications (0)
- 02: ERIC Grid – Blue Ocean Strategy for Departmental Transformation (0)
February 2015 (4)
- 23: Trust Needs to be Earned (0)
- 16: What does a Programme Manager do? (0)
- 09: Seven Things to do When Starting Specification by Example with Cucumber (0)
- 02: I shall call him ‘Kanban,’ and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Kanban (2)
January 2015 (4)
- 26: 3 Million Pound Budget Cut! Don’t Panic and Go Look for Help (0)
- 19: I always work with a Technical Lead. Always (0)
- 12: Got a WBS for your Agile project? Sure, of course! (10)
- 05: The Kanban Method 101 (3)
December 2014 (5)
- 29: The Conductor of an Orchestra Doesn’t Make a Sound (0)
- 22: Purpose Finding: Only solve problems you need to (1)
- 15: Scrum Product Owner: Scrum’s Uber-Pig (0)
- 08: UX team want a Trello board? Don’t let them (10)
- 01: Example of Day to Day Governance on an Agile Programme (0)
November 2014 (4)
- 24: I go where the risk is (0)
- 17: Does a Scrum Team need a Project Manager? (3)
- 10: None the wiser after the stand up? Wrong stand up or chance to learn (1)
- 03: RAG status – Red is a call for help (3)
October 2014 (4)
- 27: Another kicking from stakeholders? Not when dispassionate and positive (0)
- 20: Why I don’t hire Scrum Masters (14)
- 13: Five things to do when people don’t to see the value of automation (0)
- 06: Specialists are a Pain (0)
September 2014 (4)
- 22: Headphones cut off vital information (1)
- 15: Business Representative or Product Manager. Who is the Product Owner? (0)
- 08: What to do when Estimates go up a lot (0)
- 01: Agile Status Report for Executives: Best, Worst, Throughput (0)
August 2014 (4)
- 26: Talent not practice: The myth of the 10,000 hours (9)
- 18: Agile Project Manager as Shepherd (0)
- 11: Six Things To Do When Agile Newbies Join Your Team (0)
- 04: How to spot a Product Owner’s Pet Requirements (0)
July 2014 (4)
- 28: Is Kanban Turning Developers into Mindless Automata? Not necessarily (2)
- 21: Who is Specification by Example for? Everybody! (0)
- 14: It is ALL Number One Priority / It is ALL Must Have. Not true! (1)
- 07: Solution Convergence: Marrying Business, User Experience and Technical Input (0)
June 2014 (5)
- 30: My four days of silence surrounded by developers (3)
- 23: Product at the end of its life cycle? Try the Scream Test (0)
- 16: PMs Need a Technical Ally When Introducing Automated Testing (0)
- 09: Nine Things to do When Nobody on Your New Team Knows Lean-Agile (0)
- 02: Four Reasons to Book Regular One-to-One Meetings (0)
May 2014 (4)
- 26: Two Heads are Better Than One (0)
- 19: Specification by Example helps even with no Automation (2)
- 12: Everybody on your new team says they know Agile. Don’t believe it (0)
- 05: Corporate control = Project brakes (0)
April 2014 (4)
- 28: Abuser Story – User Stories to Prevent Hacking (2)
- 21: DRY Gherkin: When Using Cucumber, Keep Your Step Definitions DRY (0)
- 14: What do you do when the business imposes an arbitrary deadline? (0)
- 07: Build it Twice then Build it again – the 3rd Version Will be Great (0)
March 2014 (5)
- 31: Plug for Henrik Kniberg’s Agile Product Ownership in a nutshell (1)
- 24: Agile has Lists but isn’t Lists (0)
- 17: Improve Customer Collaboration with Ubiquitous language (0)
- 10: What to do when a developer produces too many bugs (0)
- 03: Lean-Agile is micromanagement but not in an excessive way (0)
February 2014 (4)
- 24: Software Batch Sizes are Plummeting (0)
- 17: Three Amigos Meeting – Agree the tests before development starts (7)
- 10: No need for a PM for a team of one. Professionals manage their own time (0)
- 03: Observing, eavesdropping and overhearing – essential tools for a software development leader (0)
January 2014 (4)
- 27: I’m Impatient with the Pseudo-action Deceptions (3)
- 20: Brakes let you go faster (0)
- 13: Help! Looking for Topics for “What to do when . . . ?” (3)
- 06: Accuracy vs Precision in Estimation (1)
December 2013 (5)
- 30: Are you dead? A comfortable Agile Project Manager isn’t doing their job (0)
- 23: Bucking Bronco: Software Projects that Kick (0)
- 16: Declarative vs Imperative Gherkin Scenarios for Cucumber (2)
- 09: Developers don’t have time for code reviews and unit tests (1)
- 02: Fluid Planning and Execution Creates Agility (0)
November 2013 (4)
- 25: Whose responsibility is testing anyway? (0)
- 14: Cake Driven Development (0)
- 11: No space to co-locate team – think again (2)
- 04: Avoid the Refactoring Branch of Doom (0)
October 2013 (4)
- 28: When Buckets Go Bad (0)
- 21: Cucumber: Who writes the Gherkin Scenarios (4)
- 14: What to do when Scope is Fixed (0)
- 07: Bucket Planning – Helpful Metaphor for Agile Release Planning (0)
September 2013 (5)
- 30: Glad Sad Mad Retrospectives (1)
- 23: What is an Agile person? (0)
- 16: Which Gherkin Scenarios go in which Feature File (0)
- 09: User Story Dependencies are more Apparent than Real (6)
- 02: You can go a long way with a Shonky User Interface (0)
August 2013 (4)
- 26: The Lean-Agile Fanatics are all Wrong (1)
- 19: Cucumber is my tool of choice for Specification by Example (0)
- 12: Reporting Percentage Complete on an Agile Project (0)
- 05: Three Ways to Control Scope in an Agile Programme (0)
July 2013 (5)
- 29: Kanban in Video, Post and Book (3)
- 22: Research on Pair Programming by Professionals (14)
- 15: Six Reasons to Adopt Specification by Example (0)
- 08: 90% Complete not = Done (0)
- 01: Daily Plan: Stand up to Plan the Day (0)
June 2013 (4)
- 24: Pair Programming is Best in Discovery Mode (2)
- 17: Specify Business Rules by Example (1)
- 10: What do I do When the Project Manager is late for their own daily meeting (1)
- 03: The Sign Off – An Example of Delegation and Decision Making (0)
May 2013 (4)
- 27: Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies – Don’t Get Smacked in the Face (3)
- 20: Specification by Example versus Behaviour Driven Development (0)
- 13: No walls: What to do when you’ve no Walls for your Informative Workspace (1)
- 06: Manage All Assumptions as Risks (0)
April 2013 (5)
- 29: Epics: My Love Hate Relationship with Large User Stories (2)
- 22: User Story Format Should Not Be a Straight Jacket (1)
- 15: 4 Objectives for an Automated Test Strategy (0)
- 08: When Meeting Madness Strikes (0)
- 02: Agile Requirements Snail: Feature to User Story to Scenario (4)
March 2013 (4)
- 25: “Small” is an Estimate (0)
- 18: Agile Programme Roles and Responsibilities (0)
- 11: What do I do when There is More Than One Product Owner (4)
- 04: Estimate To Inform Investment Decisions (7)
February 2013 (4)
- 25: The Scrum of Scrums is not Agile Programme Management (0)
- 18: Programme Organisation for Software Delivery (0)
- 11: How to Juggle New Product Development with Operational Demands (0)
- 04: Three Talents of Great Project Managers (0)
January 2013 (5)
- 28: Agile MSP Programmes with Rigid Projects. Ouch! (0)
- 23: Speaking at the BBC Cardiff Kanban Meet Up (2)
- 21: Benefits Map: Impact Mapping for Programme Managers (4)
- 14: Three Strategies when the Product Owner is Disengaged (0)
- 07: MSP Agility Scorecard: How MSP Shapes up against the Agile Manifesto (0)
December 2012 (5)
- 31: Pain Driven Development (2)
- 24: The Fallacy of Control within Project and Programme Management (2)
- 17: A Clear Vision is Essential for Agile Programme Management (0)
- 10: Correcting Overcommitment during a Sprint (2)
- 03: Revisiting the Iterative Incremental Mona Lisa (7)
November 2012 (4)
- 26: When To Measure Lean-Agile Productivity, and When Not To (1)
- 19: Three Threads within Agile Programme Management (0)
- 08: How to Manage a Vague or Dynamic Product Backlog (2)
- 01: I’m a Scrumbut and I’m Proud (3)
October 2012 (5)
- 24: Monthly Publication Schedule (0)
- 22: Journalism Portal: My Lean Startup in the BBC
- 15: Go Deep on Agile Practices: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How (0)
- 08: What do I do When the Team Members are Late to the Daily Meeting? (0)
- 01: What is Agile Governance? (0)
September 2012 (4)
- 22: Is the Scrum Master Protecting the Team a Bad Move? (2)
- 15: Build Less, Start Sooner, Innovate Constantly (0)
- 08: What do I do When Tasks in the Sprint Plan are not Finished? (6)
- 01: Continuous Delivery is Inevitable (0)
August 2012 (4)
- 22: Opportunity Assessment – 10 Questions to Evaluate Proposed Features and Projects (0)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship should be Professionalism and a Dedication to Improvement (0)
- 08: Three Options When the Boss Changes Priorities Mid-Sprint (0)
- 01: Rugby is a Better Analogy for Agile Delivery than the Scrum (11)
July 2012 (6)
- 30: Use a WIP Limit During a Sprint to Avoid the Cataract of Stealth (0)
- 23: A Lean-Agile Perspective at the Project Research Institute (part 2) (0)
- 22: Programme Management: Build capability, Roll it out, and Deliver Business Benefit (0)
- 15: Is Software Craftsmanship a Type of Martial Arts? (0)
- 08: Nine Common Strategies for Managing a Growing Defect Backlog (3)
- 01: Reporting Success Stories Alongside Formal Benefits (0)
June 2012 (4)
- 29: Normal Service Resumed (0)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship is an Apprentice’s Journey to Guild Master (1)
- 08: What do I do When … ? (3)
- 01: Can Cucumber save Raja? (0)
May 2012 (2)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship is a community of practice with overlapping values (2)
- 01: New Agile Teams and the Overcommitment Bear Trap (0)
April 2012 (2)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship is skilled software development in small scale production (2)
- 02: A Lean-Agile Perspective at the Project Research Institute (0)
March 2012 (2)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship is not writing crap (0)
- 01: Agile Infrastructure (4)
February 2012 (2)
- 15: Software Craftsmanship is not Software Engineering (0)
- 01: Management on the Ground (0)
January 2012 (2)
- 15: Is Software Craftsmanship some code-obsessed mishmash of martial arts and carpentry? (0)
- 01: Agile: I Prefer Hype to Ignorance (0)
December 2011 (2)
- 15: Side Bets and Sweeties in Organisational Change (0)
- 01: Reinforcing Success in Products and Projects (0)
November 2011 (2)
- 15: Requirements: State the Problem not the Solution (0)
- 01: Case Study: Motivating a team using Agile practices (0)
October 2011 (2)
- 15: Two Types of Post Implementation Review (1)
- 01: Managers v Leaders: Are Managers Plodders and Leaders Cool? (0)
September 2011 (2)
- 15: Foot in the Door Technique (0)
- 01: Declaration of Interdependence (0)
August 2011 (2)
- 20: Putting all your eggs in one basket
- 18: Migrated site and blog to WordPress
July 2011 (1)
- 18: Simon’s Critical Success Factors for a Software Release (0)
March 2011 (2)
- 15: Change is Good for Agile Projects (0)
- 15: Programme versus Project Risks (2)
December 2010 (1)
- 02: Build it in a Week (0)
October 2010 (1)
- 21: Glossary definition for “Agile” (0)
September 2010 (2)
- 12: Using a Product Led Matrix in Lean-Agile (0)
- 11: Minimum Releasable Feature (4)
August 2010 (2)
- 25: Two Pillars of the Lean Thinking House (2)
- 21: Difference between programme, project, portfolio and product management (0)
May 2010 (1)
- 13: Scale and Performance Suggestions for High Usage Websites (0)
June 2008 (10)
- 24: Agile Quality Management (1)
- 19: Agile Project Estimating (8)
- 17: Agile Project Execution (0)
- 16: Agile Project Monitoring and Control (2)
- 08: Agile Roles and Responsibilities (3)
- 06: Agile Change Management (0)
- 06: Agile Project Closure (0)
- 06: Agile Post-project (0)
- 03: Agile Project Planning (2)
- 03: Agile Pre-project (1)
May 2008 (8)
- 31: Agile Project Scope (1)
- 30: Agile Project Management (0)
- 29: Agile Gotchas (0)
- 29: Agile Project Initiation (9)
- 29: Agile Lifecycle / Agile Heartbeat (0)
- 28: Evidence for Agile (0)
- 28: Agile Terminology Comparison (0)
- 28: Agile Risk Management (4)
November 2007 (1)
- 07: One Page Agile Standard for team of 350 (3)
September 2005 (1)
- 06: XP Refactored by Stephens and Rosenberg (0)
March 2005 (1)
- 22: Mk II Function Point Analysis (FPA) (0)
December 2004 (1)
- 31: Scaling Agile Software Development for Larger Projects (0)
April 2002 (1)
- 19: An Agile Comparison (1)
March 2002 (1)
- 05: Controlled Scope Management (1)