If you’ve been paying attention to agile at all, you’ve heard these terms: pairing and swarming. But what do they mean? What’s the difference? When you pair, two people work together to finish a piece of work. Traditionally, two developers paired. The “driver” wrote the piece of work. The other person, the “navigator,” observed the […]
In preparation for my talk, Agile Projects, Programs, and Portfolio Management: No Air Quotes Required, I have created a Minimum Reading List for an Agile Transition. Note the emphasis on minimum. I could have added many more books to this list. But the problem I see is that people don’t read anything. They think they
I have an article in a new online magazine, Women Testers, the July 2014 edition. My article is called “Why Testing?” When I was a tester or a developer, I asked many questions. As a project manager, program manager or consultant, I still ask many questions. One of those is the Why question. This article
In my role as technical editor for agileconnection.com, I have the opportunity to read many terrific articles. I also have the opportunity to review and comment on those articles. One such comment is what do teams do? Do they “gel” or do they “jell”? Gel is what you put in hair. When you “gel” things,
I published a Pragmatic Manager yesterday to my subscribers. Normally, I let them enjoy the pleasure of being “in-the-know” about what I have to say this month for a while before I post the emails to my site. Read the Pragmatic Manager here: Standup or Handoff. However, I made a Big Mistake in where I
One of the familiar tensions in management is how you encourage or discourage people from bringing you problems. One of my clients had a favorite saying, “Don’t bring me problems. Bring me solutions.” I could see the problems that saying caused in the organization. He prevented people from bringing him problems until the problems were
You might think this is a political post. It is not. This is about management power and women’s health at first. Then, it’s about employee health. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court decided that a company could withhold contraceptive care from women, based on the company’s owner’s religious beliefs. Hobby Lobby is a privately held corporation.
Have you seen Esther Schindler’s great article yet? Creating High-Performance Virtual Teams of Freelancers and Contractors. Here’s the blurb: Plenty has been written about telecommuting for employees: how to encourage productivity, build a sense of “we’re all in this together,” and the logistics (such as tools and business processes) that streamline a telework lifestyle. But
At the Better Software/Agile Development conference a couple of weeks ago, I gave a talk entitled At Least Five Tips for Improving Your Geographically Distributed Agile Team. (That link goes to the slideshare.) If you look at Scott Ambler’s 2011 survey, you can see that his data matches my consulting experience. About half of all
I write a twice-yearly column for Better Software magazine. The title of the column is called “Technically Speaking.” For this column, I decide to tackle the question of “What’s a Professional?” If you don’t already subscribe to the magazine, you do have to join the site. It’s a free registration to join.