After my workshop at How to Web in Bucharest today I was approached by a project manager who wanted to know why he should move to Agile. He was clearly very good at his job, things were fine, but Agile still interested him, and he needed a reason if he was to actually embrace it. … Continue reading
A tweet escaped from Product Tank this week from Benjamin Mitchell, watching Tom Loosemore talk about alphagov: “It’s a mix of ignoring them [non-Agile managers] & making shit up” #ProductTank How is this consistent w/ Agile values of openness & trust? There’s a conference-worth of material to unpack from that question. You can make up … Continue reading
In the midst of the daily rush of delivering technological products and projects, we sometimes find ourselves questioning whether we are doing the right thing. Am I delivering what the project manager wants? Am I delivering what the user wants? Are they the same thing? How do I know the requirements are the right requirements? … Continue reading
Why, looking back at problem projects, does it so often seem that the key mistakes were made so early? And what can we do about it? This came up last week talking to someone about yet another almost-failed project, where in that case it was the wrong choice of supplier. In other conversations it’s been … Continue reading
Innovation requires trust and freedom. But freedom only comes from trust, so the primary requirement for innovation is trust. And broadly speaking, the more trust you extend to a development team the more innovative they’re going to be. At the very least, innovation will not extend beyond the trust they’re given. Here are four levels … Continue reading
I’ve been thinking recently about the different approaches to measuring in development projects, and in particular whether to measure effort or duration. The usual approach is to track time spent on tasks or on a project. This is equivalent to filling in a timesheet. Let’s say that on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday we work on … Continue reading
The other week I joined a number of peers at IndigoBlue‘s November Second Wednesday breakfast to discuss the subject of critical success factors in complex projects. As usual it was held under the Chatham House rule. What follows, then, are not minutes, but some of the important discussion points that stuck with me. Contents Definition … Continue reading
Freelance Unbound has some great laws, clearly learned the hard way, about… well, supposedly about website launches with new content management systems. But actually they can be generalised to be laws of almost any kind of big project with a strong technology element. Laws of physics? Laws of the land? Either way, you don’t need … Continue reading
I was by turns initially horrified and puzzled when I read Ryan Sholin’s piece on “How to manage technology decisions in 5 easy steps”. Horrified because they seemed at odds with my own experiences of what works and what doesn’t, and then puzzled because Ryan is someone with a great deal of experience in digital … Continue reading
…which was one of the two highest priority launches of project. Yet it happened around 12 months after we planned it, and between the planning and the launch we also launched the guardian.co.uk home page, video integration, and sections for Media, Technology, Business, Science, Society, Money and Environment. If it was so important, why did … Continue reading
