No More Mills!
I have found over the years that there are two reasons that people will engage organizations like ours to work with them: to demonstrate to a third-party that they are doing a bang-up job, or to actually improve at what they do. Read more
The Down Side of Good Tools
Often, out of the sea of different opinions of how things should be done, there rises a few techniques that make it to the level of becoming a standard way of doing things. They can be codified in a Body of Knowledge, if such a thing exists for that discipline, or become generally accepted as a ‘best practice’, though we all know that these things are quite rare. Even when they are raised to that level, there is danger that they can become overused: while every technique has it’s niche, no technique should be used too broadly. Such is the case with Work Breakdown Structures and Gantt charts. Read more
Estimation: Size Does Matter!
Many organizations find it difficult to explicitly take the step of deriving a size for the elements to be estimated, leaping directly from an overall definition of scope to the final effort or duration estimate.
Sizing is an essential step in the estimation process, significantly improving the insight and fidelity of the resulting estimates. How the practice of sizing fits into the overall estimation process is explored in this interactive workshop. Read more
Pet Tricks
Have you ever run into a situation where all else seems to fail, so you resort to measures that you hope will work, but really don’t know if they will make a difference? Of course you have. If you have ever worked on Windows before, you probably know the most common pet trick of all: ctrl-alt-del. Read more
Why Wait for Value?
I have often heard different perspectives on how long you can expect to wait before a new hire is productive. Usually the numbers come in around 3 to 6 months, and in many shops where there isn’t a sound infrastructure for communicating the company’s business sector, products and practices, this seems a reasonable timeframe. What is important to recognize, though, is that in those initial months, we should at least make sure that this new hire is not a liability. Read more
The Truth About Best Practices
It is likely that “best practices” is the most overused term in software development today. Anyone discussing what needs to be done to improve the situation on projects will use the term. It is the basis for almost any consultant’s pitch. We train in best practices, we study and promote best practices, and we still face challenges. What is it about these best practices that makes them so compelling, and why don’t they seem to work as well as consultants would suggest? Read more
Why I Write
People are often surprised when I explain that I put out a weekly (once a week, if not always on Sunday) newsletter, and have done so for almost 5 years now. It is admittedly a difficult effort to sustain at times, and there are times when I wonder if there remains value in continuing. Read more
No Problem!
While rare, there have been times that I have run into businesses that consciously chose to turn a blind eye to what was clearly dysfunctional practice. In both cases, this blind eye was accompanied by a rationalization that allowed them to justify this behaviour. Amazing! Read more
Industrial Strength Software
Googling the term Industrial Strength brings up a surprisingly high number of entries in the technology sector, with contexts ranging from development languages to operating systems to frameworks, even to a company that uses the term in its appellation. I had expected far fewer technology entries, with more pertaining to things like oven cleaners or aluminum foil. The difference is probably due to the internet being within the technological universe – I don’t recall surfing the web the last time I needed to clean the oven (though my wife would probably suggest the internet wasn’t around the last time I cleaned the oven…). Read more
Books
Develop skills to thrive in the face of workplace chaos (now available at Banyen Books and selected Chapters and Coles in Vancouver):
Ten years of observations on agility, in e-book form:
A practical guide to human dynamics in project teams:
