I have to disclose upfront that I am more of an Agile guy than a Scrum guy. Which is to say I feel more at home discussing Agile in general than Scrum in particular. (I’m not even sure how to capitalize it–SCRUM or scrum?)
Over the years I’ve made my peace with Scrum and as I [...]
I love a good fable. The kind that Aesop used to write with animals acting out human morality tales. Of course, if you do the research, you quickly find out that Aesop didn’t write most (if any of the fables) we ascribe to him and like Shakespeare he probably never existed. I don’t let reality [...]
It still amazes me how a process created by engineers for engineers can make so many engineers so unhappy.
I’ve seen all kinds of responses to Agile from engineers. Some are immediately enthusiastic. Others are cautiously optimistic. Many are amused and cynical. And some are down right hostile. Over time the responses polarize and the body [...]
What can we learn from Dr. Peter Venkman about the Agile development process? It’s true that Venkman was the less technical member of his team. Clearly Dr. Egon Spengler was the blue-sky researcher while Dr. Ray Stantz was the practical engineer. But Venkman brought a lot to the table: Charm, business acumen, and the ability [...]
Virtual currency like Cory Doctorow’s concept of Whuffie will probably replace real money in the next 100 years. Maybe sooner with the way our current economic crisis is going. Once all the hard currency in the world is spent it’s Gresham’s law FTW!
You can get a head start by using Agile development principles to min-max [...]
I’m reading a very scary book right now: Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates. It’s a funny and informative look at how philosophers and religious thinkers deal with death. I don’t want to be a spoiler but the basic message of the book is that most people live in denial of their [...]
Last week I presented to my team at Lime Wire Agile and Scrum in all it’s most excellent glory. Jason Herskowitz, Lime Wire’s VP of Product Management, and I ran though all the major Agile elements and vocabulary words. The best part of the presentation was questions asked by developers, testers, system admins, product managers, [...]
The second principle from the Agile Manifesto is “Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”
I call this the Product Manager’s dream principle: “I get to change the requirements, even after development has started! Woot!”
First let’s break this principle down and see what it really means and [...]
The first principle of the Agile Manifesto is “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.”
Easier said than done
This principle is deceptively simple and simply radical. I don’t believe it’s an accident that it’s the first principle and it’s first 3 words ensure that what [...]
Listening to one of my favorite public radio programs (The World) while carting the kids around this weekend I heard about an interesting study by the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics. A team of biocyberneticists wanted to find out how well people navigated. They hired a bunch of hikers, gave them each a GPS, [...]