Posts Tagged ‘team’

The Ballpoint Game – A Scrum Simulation

October 29, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Softskills, Software development 
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I recently played the ballpoint game for the first time and was impressed… … how clearly it demonstrates the different phases of a team going through the ‘storming, norming and performing’-phases for everyone – even for management spectators. … how the iteration-rhythm helps to keep focus and increase the team performance to a very high and predictable level. … how easy it [...]

Consistent Development Environments using VirtualMachines

July 30, 2009 by marco · 2 Comments
Filed under: Linux, Software development, Tools 
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As a development team we always run into situations where we have trouble setting up a proper development environment for each of the team members to get going or add new staff on the go. It annoyed me every time since it causes a lot of unnecessary communication and friction. I often heard of virtualization [...]

Incrementalists vs. Completionists

June 27, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Books, Softskills 
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I have just finished the book ‘Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager’ by Michael Lopp and I would like to recap the idea behind the 2 identified types of ploblem solvers on a development team. These are their characteristics: Incrementalist: They are driven by constantly making small forward increments. They [...]

Ressource Performance Management Plan

April 29, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Podcasts, Softskills 
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I am a fan of good receipes and checklists and just discovered the podcast “The Managing Software Development (MSD) Show” by James Edgell, which I highly recommend for all folks being responsible for IT-people and in the end for what they produce. The value of your software development resources (people) consists of two things: their [...]

Generalizing Specialists, Agile Heros

March 25, 2009 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Industry Terms, Software development 
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Inspired by the Podcast ‘Tips and Advice – Manifesto for Agile Software Development‘ in which Bob Payne and George Dinwiddie discuss the points made in the Agile Manifesto and talk about agile environments and mechanics. If you would like to discover the power of agile teams you should definitely check this one out! They also [...]

Planning Poker for better Estimates

January 11, 2009 by marco · 1 Comment
Filed under: Articles, Software development, Tools 
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There are many essays and articles on ‘Planning Poker’ out there. So I do not need to repeat the principles here. By checking out the recommended links (and folloups and others from your own research) you need to understand the following: What a story point of a project looks like and how you generate those [...]

Software Development Myths

November 28, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Software development 
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There is no doubt: The environment in which software is designed, produced and maintained has fundamental impact on what comes out below the bottom line for all players playing in this game. I have learnt that there is little in software development, you can do intuitively right the first time – even if you have [...]

Bureaucracy is not Discipline

November 22, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Softskills 
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Sometimes you come accross something and pause thinking ‘I have experienced exactly that’. So it happend when I read Scott Ambler’s post ‘Bureaucracy Isn’t Discipline’. Here are the main points and in my view ammunition for philosophical discussions: Successful agile practices demand great discipline and require significant skill and experience to actually get stuff done. [...]

Video: Software Craftsmenship

October 15, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Software development, Videos 
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The video (82min) shows Scott Dillman’s talk about ‘Software Craftsmenship’ at Agile 2008. He explains a series of fundamentals around software development in organizations and being a software developer, best practices, code quality, passing on knowledge, culture, metrics and many many more. Watch it! Goto: http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Craftsmanship-Scott-Dillman

Conway’s Law

September 1, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Industry Terms 
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In an article from 1968 with the title “How Do Committees Invent?”, the author Melvin Conway makes the following point, which later became established as “Conway’s Law”: “Any organization that designs a system will inevitably produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization’s communication structure.” (Original Article) (Conway’s Law on Wikipedia) Conway [...]

Make Your Projects Transparent

August 12, 2008 by marco · Comments Off
Filed under: Links, Software development 
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As projects and teams I am working on get more interwoven and organizational issues and management processes are gaining more and more traction on the 3 project dimensions time, budget and quality, I was thinking about what I would do as a manager in charge to let steam off the many issues we were facing [...]