Some habits are good. Others are productivity killers. Here’s one example. Someone schedules a meeting. That’s bad enough, right? And the person decides to make it a recurring meeting — every week for as far into the future as anyone can imagine. Then it gets worse. Week after week, zombies (sorry, I meant people) arrive […]
Companies don’t need to be better than their competition, they need to execute better. You don’t need to be better than your coworker, you need perform better. Your team doesn’t need to be better than another team, it needs to do better. Make sense? Simple, right? Not at all. When we use the term “better”, […]
Have you ever had a manager ask you to “do more”? Or maybe he skipped the politeness and just told you to “do more”? It usually happens after you’ve indicated that you have too much to do — too many projects, too many tasks, and not enough time. Rather than offer help, all the manager […]
Technical debt is a frequent topic in blogs covering agile software development. But it’s not the only type of debt incurred by software development teams. There’s no shortage of ways for software developers to dig deep holes for themselves. This post explores other forms of debt that lie in wait for the unsuspecting development team. […]
Let’s say your team deploys a new software release every four weeks. (I’m a big fan of short release cycles. In fact, I think four weeks is too long but let’s try that.) On the surface, the team appears to be using an agile development approach. But let’s stir the pot a little. What if […]
Following the rules isn’t good enough. Do you manage by proxy or are you being managed by proxy? It works like this. A manager or management team defines lots of rules — you must do this — you cannot do that. Been there? Some of the rules are sensible like those related to timely response […]
If your team follows a traditional, legacy approach to software development and wants to convert to an agile approach, how should you go about it? Let’s say you want to convert from a waterfall approach that uses a strict command-and-control model to Scrum that uses a self-organizing team model. How would you get from here […]
I have good days and not-so-good days. I’ll bet you do too. My good days are the ones that leave me feeling a sense of accomplishment. That happens when I get something done — finished, not just “worked on”. My bad days are the ones that leave me wondering what I did all day. You […]
I don’t know about you but I hate to fail. I’m not kidding. I REALLY hate failure. And that is one of the scariest aspects of agile software development. To succeed, you have to be willing to tolerate failure. In fact, if you’re not experiencing any failures, you’re not pushing yourself or your team hard […]
Software developers, testers, analysts and managers are known to be detail oriented. We need to know exactly what needs to be done so we can devise and implement software algorithms. We need answers to detailed questions so we can make the right implementation decisions. Meanwhile, business people don’t always have all the answers. This is […]
I’m hearing and seeing the word ‘agile’ more and more around the office. It comes up in hallway conversations and management presentations. Managers have gotten the message and want us to be more agile. That’s great, right? So I ask them what it means to be more agile and the answer I get is rather […]
Many managers are fond of using metrics as a way to evaluate the performance of software developers. This can be done both at the team and individual levels. However, most metrics can be “gamed”, that is, manipulated to show the desired result. Some readers are likely thinking that their teams would never “game the system”. […]
I feel compelled to weigh in regarding the recent decision by Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo!, dropping the company’s work-from-home option beginning in June. Yahoo will require that employees work in an office location (unless they have a need to work from home such as a visit by the “cable guy”). Firstly, I have to […]