I’ve written previously about the importance of talking about reward alongside talk of risk. Risk (in practical conversation) is a discussion of negatives. But we can only consider negatives if … Continue reading Have you considered your reward profile?
I’ve written before about having difficult conversations, and when working with a team it’s often just a matter of time before we all face a choice between ignoring a people-problem … Continue reading Tips for difficult conversations
When planning a single user story in a software project it’s pretty common for someone to sit down and think about some details of how it should be done. There … Continue reading A handy by-product of estimation
The other day I was listening to an interview with Christophe Beck, who composes film and television music—the scores to Ant Man and Wanda Vision are among his works. It … Continue reading Focusing on the outcome (in composition)
Most software teams—at least among those I’ve worked with—are product delivery teams. They add value by making the product, or by making the product more useful to people. But there … Continue reading The value of an improvement team
I was asked this question recently, and after a little thought gave my answer as “both”. There are, of course, other views. To make a difference, or be in any … Continue reading Is agile a methodology or a mindset?
I’ve written before about how online, text-based conversations can easily get tense, stressful, and often escalate into unpleasantness—Slack, Teams, and so on are great in some ways, and terrible in … Continue reading Dealing with difficult conversations
It’s an unavoidable reality that bad things happen. I work a lot with software engineering and systems operations teams, and there have been too many times when someone had detected … Continue reading “How can we stop this happening again?”
Most teams I’ve ever worked with are full of individuals who are intelligent and dedicated. But sometimes there is a concern from (often senior) people outside the team that there … Continue reading Motivation through user appreciation
My wife occasionally talks about a manager she once had. Once in a while she would approach him with a problem—a paper needed to be written, a process needed to … Continue reading Having solutions ready to go
