If you haven't seen the famous TED talk about how kindergarten kids outperform business school graduates in a team challenge, it's worth 5 minutes of your time. (Spoiler: collaboration that leads to iteration and learning is far superior to up-front planning.) In many teams, however, heavy up-front planning is expected and incentivized. Even if a … Continue reading Don’t confuse “bias for activity” with “bias for action”
Tag: Agile
The “3 standup questions” are terrible and need to die
How did we end up in this place? Thousands - maybe millions? - of developers sit in standup meetings daily and answer the same 3 questions ("What did you do yesterday?", "What are you going to do today?", "Any blockers?"). Managers around the world blindly adopt the same standup meeting format, without critical thought to … Continue reading The “3 standup questions” are terrible and need to die
Want to write better user stories? Stop using “can”.
Feature Factories are dangerous things. You might even work in one and don't realize it yet. Here's a test: if your team built something 6 months ago and you've no idea if anyone is using it, or if anyone even finds it valuable, you may well work in a Feature Factory. If a new hotel … Continue reading Want to write better user stories? Stop using “can”.
Software estimation is your most costly activity. Why not reduce it?
If your first reaction to this article's title was to think of other activities in software that are more expensive than estimation, that's ok! There are probably plenty of expensive things you are doing like sending large bags of money to AWS each month. However, the title says "most costly" and not "most expensive". Estimation … Continue reading Software estimation is your most costly activity. Why not reduce it?
More Than Coding 