The Value Ladder highlights how a supplier contributes to the success of the customer. The way I see it programmes and projects can be mapped onto the Value Ladder.
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Author Archives: Steven Thomas
Continuous Delivery by Default; Timeboxes by Exception
Once I used timeboxes by default. Now I relegate Sprints and such like to exception situations.
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Programmes can use more than one method: Kanban, Scrum, XP, BDD, etc
I have my preferences – Kanban and BDD – but don’t enforce these on my teams. That means I’ve got a couple of Scrum (ish) teams and teams that don’t use BDD. And I also have a bunch of people working in isolation – I just leave them to it.
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Product Owner – leader, facilitator or unnecessary overhead?
Daniel Markham thinks the Product Owner is “the perfect scam in the Agile community” and recommends getting rid of the role. This might work for highly functioning teams working in highly functioning organisations, but for not normal teams. For normal teams in normal organisations the Product Owner performs a valuable role as a facilitator and, if you are lucky, a leader.
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35 person-years worth of prototype is a fantastic spec
I once invested 35 person-years worth of effort on prototyping. From my perspective this was time and money well invested. By the end of that time we knew, really knew, what problems our customers were facing and how to solve them.
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#NoEstimates #YesEstimates #NoEstimates #YesEstimates
I’m not a fan of the #NoEstimates hashtag on Twitter. It turns out, after many blog posts and tweets, that #NoEstimates is a Contranym – a word that can function as its own opposite. #NoEstimates can mean no estimate or yes estimate – it is up to you. Sigh.
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I Only Trust Architects That Code
I only trust architects that code. Who have skin in the game. Who will suffer personally if they make the wrong architectural decisions. Who will dive in to fix any problems that arise from their decisions.
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Scope Creep v Flexible Scope – Undisciplined v Agile
Bart asked “What do I do when agile is abused as an excuse for scope creep?” with the sub-text “You’re agile so you’re flexible, no?”. I say point out the difference between scope creep and flexible scope. Agile makes changing scope a zero sum game – that gives flexibility without the creepiness.
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Choose your Lean-Agile coaches wisely; watch for Organisational Psychopaths
I’m a big fan of Lean-Agile coaches and have a list of folk that I trust to help me run transformation initiatives. But there are some cowboys out there and, at the extreme, folk who pitch themselves as coaches but are really organisational psychopaths. That is why I vet my coaches.
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Deming wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around
W. Edwards Deming, credited with launching the Total Quality Management movement, wasn’t a fan of Management by Walking Around.
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