I was speaking once to the CEO of a small company, saying how valuable I found it to have small user stories for teams to work through. Not only is … Continue reading Small user stories: The gift that keeps on giving

I was speaking once to the CEO of a small company, saying how valuable I found it to have small user stories for teams to work through. Not only is … Continue reading Small user stories: The gift that keeps on giving
I was speaking to friend recently, who had just taken on a new role leading a large-scale organisational transformation (only part of which involved IT change). Along the way, she … Continue reading Uncertainty during transformation
I’ve often worked with teams that advocate “self-organisation”. If it can be done then it is wonderful thing—it brings together autonomy and motivation, and great results are very often achieved. … Continue reading Self-organising teams need the skills and the context
One of the frustrations I sometimes hear from people in tech teams is that they’re not included sufficiently in significant decisions, or that they know how to solve several of … Continue reading Earning a seat at the table
I’ve never been able to appreciate cricket as much as I’d like (I do feel affinity with the writer who described it as “sunbathing with rules”) but I do like … Continue reading Learning by doing… a cricket match
Some time ago I was in an organisation that was very keen to adopt agile ways of working. They had some basic training, but didn’t know how to fully embrace … Continue reading Agile meetings…?
It’s easy and necessary to make assumptions. If we didn’t make assumptions then we would never make any progress in our work; we would have to stop and check everything. … Continue reading Don’t assume – talk
Throughout almost all of my technology career I’ve been involved with making sure the requirements are specified and implemented well for the products and projects I’ve been responsible for. But … Continue reading Comparing requirements with needs
Normally I’m very wary of “investigation” or “research” cards in a delivery team. Sometimes there are pieces of development work that are difficult, but I usually find that when a … Continue reading One good approach to development “research”
This week I was listening to a great podcast conversation between Ian Gill and Andy Bold, focusing on Andy’s area of expertise, which is devops. (Disclaimer: I am part of … Continue reading Team optimisations can have wider consequences