Raising The Bar?

by Charl Dreyer on July 28, 2009 · 4 comments

in Polls, Responding to Change

“A common cause of disaster in software development is that the end product is precisely what the customer originally ordered,” an article in the September 20th 2001 print edition of The Economist said. “In a world moving at Internet speed, a customer’s objectives are constantly being revised, so programmers have to be able to hit a moving target. Is there any formula for coping with this sort of unpredictability?

“With this in mind, 17 leading software gurus holed up in a Utah ski resort in February 2001 to produce a Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Portentous as it may sound, the manifesto represented the distillation of several successful team-oriented techniques, and hoped to inspire innovation groups outside the confines of software development.” [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: agile manifesto, software

Playing Broken Telephone For Keeps

by Charl Dreyer on July 27, 2009 · 1 comment

in Individuals and Interactions

For some strange reason, communication is often a very difficult thing to get right.

You may be familiar with a children’s game called Broken Telephone, where a message starts at one end of a line of kids, and is passed along in whispers from one to the next until it reaches the last child in line. This child announces the message she heard, which as you can imagine usually bears no resemblance to the orginal and causes much laughter. [click to continue…]

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Tagged as: communication, done

Orwell Removed From Kindles

by Charl DreyerJuly 23, 2009 Roles
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Product Owners hold the product vision, and it’s their job to always keep it before the Team. As with anything which is not yet, some parts of the vision may be less clear than others. When the Team needs direction on how to implement any part of the vision that is not clear, it’s often easier for a Product Owner to expound the idea by way of example. This is when Product Owners need to display their leadership.

Tagged as: ethics, leadership, product owner, respect, team

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The Future of Management

by Charl DreyerJuly 22, 2009 Must Reads
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“As much as we might deplore bureaucracy,” says Hamel, “it still constitutes the organizing principle for virtually every commercial organization in the world, yours included. And while managers here and there may work to ameliorate some of its stultifying effects, there are few who can imagine a root-and-branch alternative.”

Tagged as: bureaucracy, competition, corporate, entrepreneur, leadership, management, organization

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Release The Animal In You

by Charl DreyerJuly 21, 2009 Working Software
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The truth is sometimes spoken in jest: “Our software wasn’t released; it escaped.” Customers and users feel the brunt of poor, error-ridden software. It’s an imposition to treat them as your testers. It’s not what they pay you money for and they don’t deserve to be treated that way. Resist the urge to unleash the animal in you.

Tagged as: continuous integration, customer, software, user

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Your Best People

by Charl DreyerJuly 20, 2009 Roles
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Product ownership is the key to balanced relationships between stakeholders, the market, and software production. A product owner achieves this by directing the software development team to deliver the right solution to market that meets user needs and stakeholder expectations, in a way that is innovative, ethical, and respectful of the rights of others.

Tagged as: agile, product owner, scrum, scrum master, team

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New Product Rating Template

by Charl DreyerJuly 16, 2009 Documents
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Being able to debate objectively with those who feel sentimental and passionate about their idea is a good way to help people see the pros and cons of what they’re suggesting. And, by applying a consistent rating method to each idea you’ll quickly build up a feel for which ones are winners, and which not.

Tagged as: agile, effectiveness, efficiency, functional, template

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An Unintended Benefit

by Charl DreyerJuly 15, 2009 Documents
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Perhaps trying to make sure everyone is always busy is a legacy of waterfall (wishful?) thinking, because when everything took so long to do it wasn’t a problem keeping the idea pipeline full. But as you reap Agile’s efficiency gains you may uncover a shortage of effectiveness and creativity within your company.

Tagged as: cio, effectiveness, efficiency, leadership, organization, product owner, scrum master, team

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Get Your Own Way

by Charl DreyerJuly 14, 2009 Agile.tv
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“How do you get your boss to approve something, the customer service people to understand the pain a system is causing, or the folks in engineering to see things your way?” asks Seth Godin in a recent blog.

Tagged as: colleague, customer, effectiveness, market, need, product, remarkable, software

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Scott Adams Works Upstairs

by Charl DreyerJuly 13, 2009 Agile.tv
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Have you ever wondered whether that guy upstairs is Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert? I certainly have. He seems to have the inside track on the same insane bureaucracy that we have to deal with every day.

Tagged as: bureaucracy, bureaucratic, colleague

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