I discovered the other day about the etymology of the word “decide”. The “de-” comes from the Latin for “off”, and the “-cide” is from the same word that’s found … Continue reading When it’s difficult to decide

I discovered the other day about the etymology of the word “decide”. The “de-” comes from the Latin for “off”, and the “-cide” is from the same word that’s found … Continue reading When it’s difficult to decide
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
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?
Sometimes I find myself joining a team and introducing the idea of user research, a part of product discovery. I urge my teams to speak to users in carefully-planned interviews, … Continue reading Interviewing users you know
Recently I’ve been thinking about choices in planning—what options do we have around how to structure the delivery of a piece of work, and which should we choose? Often when … Continue reading Earn more by delivering earlier
When software teams start thinking about delivering faster one of the techniques they often try is limiting work in progress (WIP). The idea is that for each stage the work … Continue reading Limiting WIP is supposed to be painful
Earlier this year someone used a lovely phrase in conversation which was new to me, even though I should have known it, and even though I am a long-time advocate … Continue reading Stop starting and start finishing
The sprint review, the sprint demo, the show and tell… that thing that happens at the end of each short iteration where we demonstrate our most recent work. Whatever we … Continue reading The show and tell hierarchy of needs
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