I was watching a presentation called “Is it me, or is everything $#!t?”. I recommend watching it for yourselves, but here’s a taste. Consider the wisdom of crowds. If we can check out a reality TV show, and ask the crowds what they think about ideas on it, we’d get a normal distribution, sort of.
I was supposed to be there last year, but due to personal engagements had to cancel. But I’m not missing this year’s AgileEE! I’m going to talk about “10 phrases that can derail an agile project”, plus a lightning talk. I know, I know, there are other speakers as well. But come see me anyway.
This week, Friday September 14th, I’ll be doing a LIDNUG talk about unit testing (gasp!). This one is not of the introductory kind (if you’re interested in one like that, check out the video and presentation page, or check out the Typemock site). This one is for people who are doing testing for a while,
Yesterday I had a blast doing an Intro to Test Driven Development presentation. Here are the slides: And if you haven’t heard it yet, I was interviewed on the "Agile Weekly" podcast. It is a great podcast (not just my episode) - I’ve listened to the entire recording list, and it has great discussions
Recently I’ve come to value experiments. I value them so much, it seems all I’m doing is experimenting. That’s no coincidence: In an agile environment, a start-up company, or new research, we’re up to our armpits in uncertainty. We try to control it in different ways, but the fact is, unless things are clear cut,
I have a big mouth. The kind that doesn’t shut up, especially when it needs to. I thought this was a development in my adult life. Alas, no. Recently I went to my first school reunion, and the people confirmed I had this situation back then too. Usually it’s not a problem, and if it
When asked:”What’s the best thing I can do right now to improve my code quality” I always answer: code reviews. A code review is the best bug preventer out there. And even more, I like its older brother better: Pair programming. Because if a code review finds bugs after the fact, working in pairs finds
Let’s say we’ve “conquered agile”, and the prophecy came true: we have a self-organizing team. How does leadership fit into this? What does a leader do in a self-organizing team? Influence. Leadership comes in many shapes and colors. There’ll be the technical leaders. The experts about technology and or process. There’ll be social-political leaders. We’ll
When I was a young developer, there was a re-org in the company. I found myself a team leader. That is the normal thing in software organizations (and I assume also in others) – you get a promotion because you’re competent enough in your current job. It’s not stupid (although many times with disastrous results),
Last time I’ve analyzed the manager’s job at a regular company. I looked at what responsibilities the manager has, and what can be delegated to the team. If enough people see through that, we’ll have a revolution in management. Obviously, we’re not there yet. A pyramid scheme How many flat organizations do you know? And