Coaching is one of the most inconsistently used terms that I have heard recently. It conjures up visions ranging from doing winds sprints with someone blowing a whistle in your ear to lying on a couch telling someone about how your parents treated you. Coaching has been used to mean teaching, discipline, motivation, personal discovery, […]
When a large development organization took on Agile and Scrum for the first time, the role of the scrum master was the most difficult to understand and staff with the right skills. The organization, the scrum master, and the teams all had a different definition of the job. In a nutshell, the challenge was in […]
I am often struck by the challenges that our current generation of knowledge workers view as insurmountable. Admittedly, the stress of business goals can be intense. But to help put this in perspective, I’d like to take a page from the greatest generation. Those that survived the great depression and fought successfully for our liberty in World […]
It cannot be overstated how important efficient software development tools are in improving the effectiveness and predictability of a development team. Small inefficiencies multiplied over the size of the team and the duration of the project add up to a significant negative impact. Time spent compiling, building, and deploying software is pure waste. Waiting hours or […]
A key principle of systems thinking is that optimizing any single part of a system through process improvement does not necessarily improve the overall capability of the entire system. Improving widget production from 55 per hour to 100 per hour does not help much if shipping can only handle 70 per hour. If your organization […]
It’s been said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Well, a camel is a positively elegant creature compared to the “Puppy-Monkey-Baby” that greeted us in a commercial during Super Bowl 50. The creature took elements of three things that are cute on their own (well, maybe not the monkey but the […]
Software supportability needs to be anticipated and designed into an enterprise software platform. It is tempting to wait until the software is “stable”, then add supportability to it. This is a mistake, because the time you need the support tools the most is when the software is immature. The investment will have the most payback […]
