Agile Process and Architecture, Training and Consulting
The notion of accountability—and its lesser cousin, responsibility—often pop up in the context of business, as if both of those ideas are good things. A culture of accountability, we re told, is essential to running a business. The word accountable appears all over the 2020 Scrum Guide. I don t buy any of it. A culture of The post #NoAccountability appeared first on Allen Holub .
You do not need a bug tracking system. In fact, a bug tracking system is a symptom of a deeper problem insufficient focus on quality. In general, I fix bugs the moment they appear not in a drop-everything sense, but as soon as I can get to it—usually within a few hours, but sometimes in a day The post Don’t track bugs, fix them appeared first on Allen Holub .
Without psychological safety, respect, and trust, none of the following is possible. The way we work, the work we do, and the organizations within which we work are all part of a connected system. You cannot change anything without changing everything. You cannot improve a system by tinkering with the parts. Process exists in service The post Heuristics for Effective <span…
As is the case with many of the people who actually know what they re talking about, I ve come to shudder when I hear the word Agile, at least until I can figure out whether the person who uttered the word actually knows what they ve just said. More often than not, they don t. The word Agile The post Getting Started with Agility: Essential Reading appeared first on Allen Holub .
Words that do not appear in the Agile Manifesto Principles: Sprint backlog product owner manager PBI (product backlog item) scrum master Sprint review QA team PMO release train product increment stand-up (or Daily Scrum) meeting story point estimate faster time velocity quarterly plan Jira productivity utilization certification standardized process (as a positive) methodology ceremony The post…
Every time I teach a remote class from my home office, somebody says oooh, where d you get that clear whiteboard. White boards are just ugly, and I wanted something that would essentially disappear into the room, so glass seemed like the best choice. Though I see these in many detective shows on PBS :-), I The post Building A Clearboard appeared first on Allen Holub .
Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organization is one one the best books to hit the shelves in a long time. Nicole Forsgren, and her co-authors, Jez Humble and Gene Kim have done the industry a huge service by providing a data-focused way of analyzing and improving performance that s based on real research, not The post Adapting #Accelerate to Development appeared first…
The notion of technical debt is not well understood, so let s start there. Agile is all about fast feedback loops—hours or, at most, a couple days. Deliberately lengthening your feedback loop in pursuit of the chimera of perfection destroys your agility. The cost of that delay is a real cost. It usually exceeds development costs The post Technical Debt appeared first on Allen Holub .
For some reason, the notion of individual performance reviews comes up a lot. My general feeling is that we should dump them entirely. I m actually in good company. Almost a third of U.S. companies are dropping individual reviews, including stodgy places like General Electric. (See this HBR article if you can get past their paywall. The post Individual Performance Appraisals, Just Say No! appeared…
Somehow, some people have gotten the idea that design is somehow inimical to Agile. That s not true. It s always helpful to think about things before you do them. The question is not whether or not you should think in advance, it s how far in advance should the thinking occur. Hours? Days? Months? The problem with The post The Problem With Design appeared first on Allen Holub .