Agile Principles: Go Together
Twenty years ago, an agile rebellion started among a small pocket of besieged software developers. Today, the benefits of agile methodologies have improved stock trading, federal bureaucracies, celebrity chef-led humanitarian efforts. Yet Agile has started to lose favor. This has prompted us to get back to basics and start a series focusing on the Principles of Agile. (7 min read)
You Are Using the ‘5 Whys’ Wrong. Here’s How to Improve.
The practice of “5 Whys” was pioneered by Toyota, and is practised by designers worldwide. It is a research technique meant to get to the bottom of things. Many write about it, but neither Forbes, nor IDEO, nor the Interaction Design Foundations tell you about 2 dangerous flaws baked into the technique. (7 min read)
Mary and Tom Poppendieck: Keeping Your Team Together During the Great Resignation
In this episode, Richard interviews Mary and Tom Poppendieck. Richard tackles with them one of the burning problems of today’s business world: how to retain an increasingly independent workforce? (45 min video)
Why I Keep Coming Back to Cynefin
Cynefin is a useful conceptual tool for bringing leaders to the point where they understand that they may need to change their usual approach for this new context. (8 min read)
Scaling the Practice of Architecture, Conversationally
Architecture need not be a monologue; delivered top-down from the minds and mouths of a centralised few. This article describes another way to do architecture; as a series of conversations, driven by a decentralised and empowering decision-making technique, and supported by four learning and alignment mechanisms: Decision Records, Advisory Forum, Team-sourced Principles, and a Technology Radar. (11 min read)
Faster and More Predictable
Everyone wants their software development organization to be faster and more predictable. The changes are not easy but are fairly straightforward if you begin with an understanding of why work is slow and unpredictable. (24 min read)