I was asked recently about the ideal relationship between the architecture and development functions within an organisation. In some sense the ideal relationship can take many forms, because the shape … Continue reading The development/ architecture feedback loop
A short time ago I attended a talk by Paweł Nowak on the subject of context. I was a bit perplexed before he started, after all context is an idea … Continue reading Context has different perspectives
A few years ago I had a conversation with Niels Malotaux, who spends a lot of time promoting the idea of “zero defects”. I was asking how he achieved this, … Continue reading Zero defects as an attitude
I once worked on a project where the key sponsor was particularly keen to get our work in progress up on the office walls. He had more significant wishes, too … Continue reading Putting things on walls aids collaboration
I was recently involved in a conversation with some colleagues, in which one of them was seeking to introduce to their own organisation “the Spotify model” [pdf] of organising teams. … Continue reading Don’t be a slave to the model
A little while ago I was working with a team that had a lot of user research to do. Naturally, we only had limited time, so we needed to decide … Continue reading Prioritising hypothesis tests
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 … Continue reading Avoid hostage situations when refactoring
The other day I was at an Underground station where there were a number of charity collectors with buckets. I put a coin in a collector’s bucket and he gave … Continue reading Make good work visible
Some time ago I was working with a team that made a mistake in generating its release notes. I took on the task of improving the process to avoid us … Continue reading Achieving excellence is hard work
Organisational culture is seemingly nebulous, hard to pin down. But in fact it’s based on very concrete, tangible things. It follows that by changing those tangible things we can change … Continue reading Culture is based on tangible things
