Take anything. Any activity. Any Practice. Any Standard. Any Method. Ask the question “why?” – with fresh eyes, take a long hard look at why we are doing it. Now, ask yourself if the “why” is being accomplished. Ask yourself if you even know how to measure the benefits you originally sought. Ask yourself if…
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Take Your Team to a Drag Race
One thing that I have noticed at the beginning of a project is that there almost always appears to be confusion. Confusion about mission. Confusion about terminology. Confusion about what is important. Confusion about roles and responsiblilities. It feels bad, it looks bad and it smells bad. It’s like what drag racers do before a…
Project Pork Prevention
Why is it that the customer in corporate software projects seems to want to pack the scope of every project with capabilities of dubious value, in the same way that our congressional leaders try to pack important bills with “pork”? Why do organizational leaders try to take a well funded project or initiative and use…
Real World Developer Manifesto
Real World developers prefer: Getting things done over sitting in meetings, but understand that communication is important. Working code over extensive documentation, but understand that government regulations, and product sustainability require a rational approach to documentation. Requirements that describe business value over requirements that prescribe implementation vectors, but understand that the customer often can only…
Is It Me?
Occasionally – I will get into a conflict with someone, and I don’t know why. When I look back at the conversation, what I remember, it becomes apparent that either I baited someone into an argument, or vice versa. Sometimes this happens because I attach connotative meaning to something someone says because I think I…
Estimation Purposes
Mike Cottmeyer’s post about How to Think About Estimating is freakin’ brilliant. I applaud him for speaking his mind, and telling us how professional software delivery can get done. Why? Because he gets down to the guts of why estimation is hard for so many teams, and while it seems to me that half of…
10x Software Productivity Variance – What?
This article by Larry O’Brien got me fired up… Not because I disagree with the notion of some software developer being 10 times as “fast” delivering software as the average developer. Because that is not what productivity means. Productivity is about leverage, not speed.
Team Vs. Skill
Here is a team formation anti-pattern that I have observed recently: Dividing the team along the lines of Skillset. Grouping teams along skill lines, inherently sets up competition rather than collaboration. This is especially true (in my experience) in software designed, where skills vary by “architectural layer” so subteams form at the layer level. Each…
Team Vs. Me
This week I have been reflecting on the relationship of ego to team, and how to deal with clashes of ego’s as teams form, and reform. Over the last few months, I have watched a project that I am playing a key role on transform from an outsourced staff model to a hybrid staff model,…
React or Reflect
I have been observing behavior patterns in leaders that I am around. Here is one observation: Some leaders react to a situation, and others project the behavior that they want into the situation, so that others can reflect it back. Sometimes this is positional. Leaders behave differently depending on the amount of automomy, or authority…