leadership Is Zeigarnik affecting your team? Yesterday I had a call with an old acquaintance, and while chatting about various team behaviours, he described a situation that reminded me of a topic I've been wanting to write on. It's called the Zeigarnik effect. In a nutshell, it's that we are
agile Are you dark agile? Interesting new presentation on "dark agile". As someone who has seen truly agile teams thrive, yet also worked in "agile" environments that were offensively infuriating, I'm feeling vindicated to have this new label that seems so well-fitting for so many companies who claim to
agile Requirements or acceptance criteria? Lots of questions on this lately as we examine how our product teams could scale. Requirements are the input to your engineering function. It's what your client wants. They are idealized descriptions of what the client thinks they want the software to do. They're
employment Phone screen Michael Lopp's favourite part of the phone screen is taking questions. The interviewee gets to show off their research skills and ask probing, insightful questions, and Michael gets to answer them. I'm not a fan of lazy questions. I can think of no better
agile Faux-agile A few months back Martin Folwer put out a transcript of his 2018 keynote at Agile Australia. As usual, there were many snippets that jumped out at me, and many that hit close to home. Many of the "agile transformation" environments I've
agile new gig Three weeks ago I started at a new company: I've taken on the role of lead software engineer at a Vancouver startup focused on bringing to market virtual reality business solutions. Our first product bets target the AEC industry (architecture, engineering and construction), specifically
books how f'd up is your management? Saw this one on amazon when perusing books on agile and team management, took a chance on the kindle version. Surprisingly relevant -- I seem to be on a very similar track as Johnathan Nightingale, although maybe five or ten years behind him. A
books phoenix project I have a renewed interest in Agile. I suppose the last few years of "corporate" software projects have left a.. taste in my mouth. Agile at startups seemed much easier to implement, since the teams were smaller and had already bought in
books mindset I just finished reading Carol S. Dweck's "mindset", and I wish I could have read it years ago! Does a wonderful job providing a mental model for wetware refactoring. I'm always looking for tricks to curb my reptile brain, and this book
programming Agile training A few weeks back I participated in a four-day Agile training provided by the POWERSHiFTER client I've been working with for the past year and half. The client started a transition to Agile about 3 years ago, but corporate environments are slow to change.