A guy walked up to me and said “I hear you’ve got a problem with Flash”. I hadn’t met him before but I’d heard about him. Mike Brown the Development Paratrooper.
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Author Archives: Steven Thomas
How to Distinguish Between Activity and Queues on a Kanban Board
My Kanban boards follow a certain pattern, what I call the “Step In Progress then Done” pattern. By default each step in my process has an “In Progress” column and a “Done” column. Some people don’t like that. You wouldn’t believe the number of conversations I’ve had about it. These conversations more or less boil down to me explaining that “Done” is a queue, not an activity. And I want my Kanban board to make it clear that each activity has an associated queue.
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Did HeartOfAgile emerge from PDCA?
I don’t know if it was Alistair Cockburn’s inspiration but I’ve noticed a striking similarity between Cockburn’s HeartOfAgile and the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle of TQM.
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Going back to basics with Agile, what would we find? The Heart of Agile
In a world with non-software Agile and Agile at scale, what is Agile? I think Alistair Cockburn has hit the nail right on the head with his recent HeartOfAgile.
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Quality is a choice: the case of the Next Generation Apps
Over the last year I’ve had the privilege of overseeing the development of the next generation of mobile apps (iOS and Android) for the major commercial radio brands in the UK. The most amazing thing about this experience was the priorities – UX&D was #1 priority – something I’ve never had before.
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Strong products are backed by “Three-market-forces”
Oren Klaff’s book is on how to “Pitch Anything” however it includes a lot of valuable insight into start ups and new product development. One idea I liked was the “Three-market-forces” pattern.
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What is the optimal number of manual testers in a development team? Zero?
To have manual testers, or not to have manual testers, that is the question. Typically I have one per team: Less than many teams but more than some organisations get away with.
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Lead time versus Cycle Time – Untangling the confusion
Despite being a fan of Lean and using Kanban I’ve stopped talking about “Cycle Time”. The problem is that there are two conflicting definitions of Cycle Time. And one of those definitions is identical to Lead Time. Given the competing definitions for Cycle Time, and that the variations have alternative unambiguous names, it is easier not to use the term at all. All I need is “Takt time”, “Order Lead Time” and “Production Lead Time”.
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Are you leading or just going for a walk?
If you fancy yourself as a leader, have a glance behind you … is anybody following? Are you leading or just going for a walk?
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Look for Product Owners in the Business
You cannot lead what you don’t understand so I often recruit product owners from the business.
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