A short time ago I was talking to friends about teams who struggled to create “good” user stories. One friend talked about an organisation where most teams understood what a good user story looked like, but one or two still created user stories that looked like tasks from an old-style project. These might include things … Continue reading
The other week I was at a show and tell with—thankfully—not the usual suspects. The team and key stakeholders were present, but also some other curious people from around the organisation. There was a lot to cover in 30 minutes, so the team rattled through the material and there were a couple of brief questions … Continue reading
We sometimes think we want to eliminate uncertainty. Clarity is helpful in our projects and in our businesses. When I listen to discussions about Brexit (today’s status: approaching the leave date without knowing what will happen then) we hear about businesses wanting certainty. All this is fine, but in fact that’s not always strictly true. … Continue reading
Last week I talked about refactoring and the need—throughout that process—to still be able to deploy frequently. What I did not explain was why it was important to still be able to deploy frequently, and that was a bit of an omission, because we shouldn’t take these kinds of mantras lightly. The reason is to … Continue reading
I’ve often come across a situation where a team needs to undertake a major refactoring or some other technical change, which may take in the order of days or weeks, and we need to discuss how to approach it. In years gone by, before continuous deployment was the norm and microservices were popular, it usually … Continue reading
I’m reading a book called “Carpe Diem Regained”, about how the phrase (meaning seize the day) has been interpreted and misinterpreted over the centuries, and what it can usefully mean to us today. One aspect that I found parallelled my project work life was that one interpretation of carpe diem is about effective prioritision. The … Continue reading
I’ve updated my Google Sheets burn-up template once again. Here are the changes: There’s a handy new shortcut key for the most common action: adding a new line to record a change in a user story. This is Shift + Ctrl + Alt + 1 on PC and Shift + Option + Cmd + 1 … Continue reading
The other week I was reading about the quality problems with major Windows 10 releases. To recap, Microsoft started rolling out to the public their second Windows 10 release of the year (called 1809), but had to halt it quickly when it was discovered it was deleting some people’s files. Before Windows 10 Microsoft would … Continue reading
Often in a work environment I find I’m faced with difficult problems, and while I manage to find ways to move forward, I do this without knowing exactly what the end state should look like. An example of such a problem might be agreeing the best process for something within a team, or a company. … Continue reading
The other day a friend and I were discussing a project which had notably overrun its original expected delivery date. “The problem is,” he said to me, “You estimate a project at the point you understand it the least.” This is a great phrase, and good to remember, even though it’s not strictly true. If … Continue reading
