Continuous (“ish”) release patterns in agile teams
When I first worked with an agile team, we released our work into production whenever we wanted to. We were able to do our own testing, our own release control and our own communication with users. We also supported our own work. We released some things during the day and others outside normal…
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What is an agile coach?
Agile coaching is about far more than being able to facilitate a retrospective or provide guidance on building a burn-up chart. Agile coaching requires a deep concern for the team, as individuals and as a cohesive group, and the ability to help others reach their full potential. The goal of the…
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Product owner and scrum master metrics
Now that agile has gone mainstream, I often find that people are concerned about the performance of the members of an agile team. In particular, people seem interested in how we measure the product owner and team facilitator roles (scrum master, agile coach, celebrity post-it note artiste etc). When…
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Experimenting with bad coaching habits
When I first became a coach it was great. I really enjoyed coaching and people told me that they found me really helpful. But I noticed that, while I was able to help people solve problems and gain “aha” moments, I seemed to be having the same conversations again and again. People seemed to be great…
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Webinar: Becoming invaluable. The T-shaped professional
What are the most crucial skills that software developers and engineers need to have? Most people, when asked this question would say that mathematical proficiency and technological expertize are most important. For many years now training and education have focused on building STEM (science…
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Simplicity and requirements
In today’s world of systems and solutions development, we are increasingly concerned with being more agile, with having a lean approach, with delivering value more quickly. We are consciously looking for ways of avoiding spending time on anything that is unnecessary. We are looking for simple…
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Continuous delivery – What does it mean? What does it mean to testing?
Continuous delivery is a cornerstone of the agile approach, that’s why we talk about things like “sustainable pace”, focus on “technical excellence”, and clear understanding of “done”. Within the iteration, the team needs to really understand all the activities that produce a tested product and…
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SoftEd's, Iain Fraser launches new book
On Wednesday, SoftEd director Iain Fraser released his new book along with co-author Madeline Taylor. The book, The Business of People: Leadership for the Changing World aims to help leaders navigate in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world, helping them to develop their…
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Likenomics and Influence
Relationship building is critical for all members of a product development team – but it’s especially important for project managers and business analysts because their work requires the ability to lead resources without necessarily having the positional authority over those they lead. In thi…
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What is this agile thing anyway?
If you are a professional working for a company that has a lot of application development and project work going on (finance, insurance, retail, or transportation industries to name a few), there is a good chance you have heard the word agile or potentially scrum thrown around a lot. Since the…
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Getting back to live hands-on training to meet competitive demands
There are vast arrays of solutions currently that offer just in time eLearning. From YouTube videos to MOOCs, to short courses on Pluralsight, CBT Nuggets or LinkedIn Learning. Each of these options will allow you a quick and easy way to curate the content you need, take it and move on. In reality…
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Stones
We’re big fans of Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. Scaling Up is a toolbox for growing a business and one of the tools Verne suggests is a quarterly theme — a great way to focus the company on a single KPI for three months, then celebrate when you achieve it. We don’t do themes every quarter, but some…
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