Hardly a Silver Bullet
We’ve been collecting data on a number of teams over the years, and now have responses from close to 800 participants. The questions cover demographics, practices and performance, and are designed to understand what is going on, not to pitch a particular approach or practice. I thought it would be interesting to compare the results from those that claim they are using agile approaches against those using other industry frameworks. Read more
The 5 Biggest Team Delusions
Filed under: Agility, Process, Project management, Teamwork
Over the years, there are a number of statements that I hear that make me step back for a moment. Some are relatively new, some have been around as long as I can remember, but every one of these, in my experience, usually means something very different (and less effective) than what the words might indicate. I’m sure there are more, but this is a start. Read more
Congruence, Empathy, Transparency
I recently finished working with groups that had a wide range of personalities and backgrounds, and were split into teams to deal with a comprehensive project. It never ceases to amaze me the differences in the way some groups manage to get along just fine, while others never seem to gel. Read more
Stepping on Toes
I spend a lot of my time in front of a classroom of adults, or presenting on topics to a group of often seasoned practitioners. Over the years, I have come to form a number of opinions that, shall we say, deviate slightly from the commonly accepted way of thinking. Put these two together, and I am finding that I sometimes step on a few toes. Read more
Benefit of the Doubt
When I start to work with a new team, whether it is with a new group for a training session, a new client site where I will be working for a period of time, or that client brings a new employee into the fold, I tend to start with the assumption that everything is good out of the gate. My initial trust is pretty high, and I have high expectations that we’re going to get along well and do good work together. I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, even if people have tried to warn me in advance. Read more
Communication 2.0
The proliferation of different ways to connect these days is unbelievable. I swear that some days, the requests to become friends or linked or follow tweets outnumber the regular e-mails in my old-fashioned inbox. That stated, though, I’m not sure that the real issue is going away. Are we really communicating more effectively? Read more
Stargazing
I’m sure it happens in any industry, yet it never ceases to amaze me. Once someone gets a bit of prominence, once they have discovered the secret handshake, many people will stop questioning what comes out of their mouth (or fingertips if online), and take their missives as gospel. Crazy, but true, and costly in the technology field. Read more
Local Maximum
Recall back to your college days, there was likely a time when you needed to calculate the maximum value for a given 3-dimensional function. There are a number of algorithms available, but many fall into the trap of only finding a local peak, rather than the absolute maximum. I’m sure that most of you asked yourselves whether you would ever use this in the real world. I’m sure I did, even the second time I took that infernal course. It turns out that the problem of reaching local maxima seems to occur in a team environment all the time, where it is not as rigorously understood that it is even a problem. While there is far less math involved, the solution can end up being just as difficult to implement. Read more
Communication Chasm
I read an article from Cutter’s Agile E-mail Advisor this week that sparked my interest. In it, Jens Coldewey concluded that “rather than being an opposition to software engineering, agile development is an alternative draft of software engineering”. In the context of Jens’ article and some presentations earlier in the week at the PNSQC, here was my response. Read more
Not Rotting in Smugness
I gave a couple of presentations at the Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference in Portland this week: a case study about a rousing success we had with HP in Barcelona, and a presentation about what each of us as individuals can do to improve overall quality in collaborative teams. The conference uses green, yellow and red cards to allow people to rate the talk immediately, with the option of providing some written feedback. While both talks were very well received, one person responded to my ‘individuals’ talk with the following comment on a red card: “the correlation chart, the last entry about length of employment – you mean active engagement – the substitution of length of employment is why age discrimination mean I expect to lose my job – may you rot in your smugness”. Woah! Let me respond… Read more
