Many of the companies I visit start with much the same problem: the development team aren’t collaborating effectively either internally or with the business, so they would like to adopt Agile, or better forms of Agile.

Usually these are pretty awesome companies producing quality software, and it can take a while to work out what the real problem is ( Read more... )

A couple of years back, I ran a talk on how to apply some of BDD’s techniques to your whole life, and to life coaching.

I am very excited to announce that this year, at GOTO Chicago (April 23rd - 24th), I will be revisiting that talk, but this time I’ll be looking at some of the more crazy stuff we’ve introduced into BDD’s toolbox over the last few ( Read more... )

Today Benjamin Mitchell played a small exercise I really liked during his Kanban talk.

Benjamin gave each of two people 5 A4 envelopes and 5 pieces of paper. The two people were given instructions to either write a letter sequentially, or to do it in batches.

The sequential person had to put the paper in the envelope, write their address on the ( Read more... )

Scholars immersed in books
Rise blearily, wiping their eyes,
And gather in knots of threes and fours
In the angles of the square.
They avoid each other’s anxious looks;
The crowds who gathered to hear the wise
Are turned away from the college doors
To seek answers elsewhere.

Staunch pigeons flinch from the open sky,
As though they knew that a day ( Read more... )

Before I run a retrospective, I often run a safety check.

The purpose of the safety check is to see how safe people feel sharing their opinions or problems in the room. I’ve been doing this for some years now, and have made many terrible, horrible mistakes! So I thought I would share my learning and help others avoid the same fate.
The format

I ( Read more... )

Did you know that there are types of requirements which are so uncertain that talking through them will just end in arguing about them? Or that some requirements are so well understood they’re simply boring? That some requirements are more likely to change than others? Would you like to be able to tell the difference, ask relevant questions and ( Read more... )

Since much of my focus is on getting people to talk and communicate effectively, I thought I would share a couple of sites that might be of use to people wanting to learn the language we tend to communicate in - English.

English StackExchange is “a free, community driven Q&A for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts” - ( Read more... )

I’m awesome, and arrogant.

I’m awesome, and arrogant, and I know it, and this makes me joyful. I wanted to share that joy with you, and explain why I think arrogance is so important, and humility overrated.

For a start, humility suffers from a Catch-22 condition: if you have it, you can’t know you have it, because if you know you have it you don’t ( Read more... )

This is a pretty simple workshop which I ran at Agile 2011 and have run as part of my BDD tutorial since. It usually gets people thinking differently, so I thought I’d share it with you too. Some teams have taken this away to use as another retrospective format, and I’m always fascinated by the stories that come out! It can often lead nicely into ( Read more... )

A couple of posts ago, I wrote about Feature Injection. Here’s a quick summary of how I do it:

• Vision: A primary or core stakeholder has a vision which will save money, make money or protect revenue.
• Goals: As well as his own goal, the goals of other stakeholders will have to be met too, in order for the vision to go live.
• Capabilities: To deliver ( Read more... )