Last week I was contacted by a man who wanted me to help his company write better requirements specifications. I suggested that writing better specifications probably would not help, but that there were other things they should try. This was … Continue reading →
So agile is dead or dying you say. I think you are right as long as it is the label itself you are talking about. Everyone claims to be agile and everything is described as agile. But who cares? The … Continue reading →
So, the big debate about agile culture versus agile practices is raging. First Allen Holub wrote a blog entitled The Agile Holocracy. Andrew Binstock followed up with The Corruption of Agile. Uncle Bob then countered with The True Corruption of … Continue reading →
Inspect and adapt is a beautifully simple concept. Start with a process and introspect to find areas where things are not optimal. Test remedies for the problems you uncover to see if they improve things. Repeat. In theory you can … Continue reading →
My friend Johannes Brodwall recently pointed me to a short video by Alistair Cockburn called: Core scrum, barnacles, rumors and hearsay. Alistair uses the elegant analogy of barnacles to describe all the things that have latched on to Scrum over … Continue reading →
If you think about it there are only two fundamental approaches to solving a problem. Either you plan how to solve it first and then try to follow this plan or you just jump in and start solving the problem … Continue reading →
The agile perspective When the agile manifesto was published a decade ago I welcomed it. I had been building applications for a decade pretty much according to the principles in the manifesto. During this period I had watched in horror … Continue reading →
I am a great admirer of Lean thinking in general and Deming‘s work as a foundational part of it. In an age where everyone is talking about how ideas spread in seconds, his ideas were so subtle and counterintuitive that … Continue reading →
The writing of requirements is one of the core practices in software development. Most people hate the job but they see it as something that is fundamentally necessary. But what if the whole idea of requirements is wrong? What would … Continue reading →
I was at a Meetup the other day with Eric Evans. I liked the talk even if it was very similar to the one he gave at the last JavaZone. Eric makes the same point as I do in respect … Continue reading →