Are Sprints Just a Way to Organise Releases?
I’m increasingly convinced that some teams cling to Sprints / Timeboxes because they facilitate release planning. A Sprint = a mini-Release = real simple. However, continuous delivery means these “Sprints” are not real Sprints.
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Category Archives: Flow
Contracts do not fix incompetence
“Contracts are the least powerful in getting people to do something. A contract does not fix incompetence.” Not my words, they come from Rajesh Mathur, but I completely agree.
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Albert Einstein would have liked Retrospectives
I believe Albert Einstein would have liked retrospectives.
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User Stories are Experiments
Mini-experiments are a key aspect of the Lean Startup movement, so I like the idea of user stories as experiments.
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Need an unsolvable problem solved? Call in the Development Paratrooper
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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Work Item Tracking, to See or Not to See?
Work Item Tracking, to See or Not to See? This is always an interesting debate. The lists are much longer but for simplicity I’ve surfaced a few salient points. So which is best? Physical or virtual? For me physical boards win hands down, but there are occasionally good reasons for a careful blend.
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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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A U in UX
Obvious, right. Well, perhaps not. After all, what is UX anyway? I have many conversations on this topic, with developers and UX designers, and I never seem to get the same answers. I find that both fascinating, and a little frustrating, and I’m very aware that the feeling’s mutual! I have a simplistic view on this, fortunately for me it aligns with the definition that pops up when you Google (other search engines are available) “what is ux”.
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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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