Lessons From Lean Coffee

One of the roles I play in the little software communities I belong to is a bit of an ambassador. I am approachable, easy-going, and tend to flit about between communities. If people feel like they don't "belong" at a "Agile" event, a "Test" event, or a "DevOps" event, they might know me, and...
Do you need SAFe, the Scaled Agile Framework?

A Hard-Core Technical Agile Coach Looks at Froo-Froo Coaching

Real Process Improvement

Process improvement in software teams seems harder to come by, and sometimes stops altogether, after the first few tries. We see the exact same phenomenon in exercise. Take a person that has never done anything athletic in their life and introduce them to a barbell and a squat rack. For the...
Saving The World From Software

We seem to have gone from software is eating the world to being terrified of being eaten. As if software were a tiger in a pen at the zoo just waiting for someone to fall in and be devoured. The author of this article on The Atlantic thinks engineers need to start thinking about
Arguing for Return on Investment

A colleague posted a question in a Skype thread about convincing people they work with about the value of a project. They have some co-workers that are very into 6 Sigma type process, where each aspect of a company is measured and accounted for (or so they think). My colleague was asking for some...
When Test Management Works

I had a breakfast meeting today with a local tester / manager type person that has recently decided to venture out and build his own company. He was working as a test manager for a company in another state and over time the company decided that role was no longer necessary. Over his tenure, he...
The Code Freeze Myth

A few years ago I was working with a development team at the end of a very long release cycle. About 15 of us were gathered in a meeting room giving our status update. Most of the developers said they were done with implementation and were either waiting for feedback from testers, or were going to...