Sailing the oceans of corporate agility
Reading time ~ 5 minutes I’m back and I’m diving into tech for a while. Read on for some fun with game development supported by LLM tools… Back in around 2015 I decided I was losing touch/empathy with my development teams so I rolled my … Continue reading → The post Migrating legacy frameworks using CoPilot (Tech experiments in 2025) first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ < 1 minute There will *always* be more work than we can handle. Learn to say “no” (politely). If you want more precision it will cost more. When someone wants “AI”, clarify what they are trying to achieve. We are here to deliver … Continue reading → The post A Few Short Leadership Lessons in Tech first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 6 minutes This post expands on one of the experiences I mentioned in “Rapunzel’s Ivory Tower“. I presented these lessons and the story at Agile Cambridge back in 2010. It’s taken nearly 5 years to see the light of day in writing … Continue reading → The post The Pitfalls of Measuring “Agility” first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 4 minutes At one of my former employers it was mandatory for every engineer and manager to be Lean Six Sigma Certified to at least Green Belt level. Most executive managers also needed to be Black Belt certified. (One of my team on my last project is a real black … Continue reading → The post Using Every Tool in the Box first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 5 minutes Some management archaeology from me today. Republishing a few posts after a recent site upgrade. This one seems even more critical in our current era than it did when I first wrote it… When I started managing teams and projects … Continue reading → The post 9 Success Factors for Working with Remote Teams first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 2 minutes I’ve tried using 5 whys techniques on many projects and with teams and individuals in a variety of situations. It’s generally used for root cause analysis but often (I think) misused for other situations. Something about it has always bothered me. … Continue reading → The post The Flaw in “5 Whys” and a Better Alternative first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 4 minutes You might be aware of the ongoing discussions around the #noEstimates movement right now. I have the luxury here of rarely needing to use estimates as commitments to management but I usually (not always) still ask my teams to estimate … Continue reading → The post Seeing the Value in Task Estimates first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 3 minutes I’ve been working in software product development companies for nearly 20 years. Until 4 years ago I’d always been involved in “enterprise” software. You know – the monolithic systems with great reporting capabilities that sell well to managers and (at … Continue reading → The post Ship Early – Why New Software Sucks first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 9 minutes At the beginning of this year the team I’ve been supporting hit a wall. After a deeply troubled project last year they’d started researching a “new” feature in December with a plan to get rolling in January. After the holiday … Continue reading → The post Recovering The Ability to Self-Organize first appeared on The Agile Pirate .
Reading time ~ 3 minutes This cautionary tale came up a few times at Agile 2010 (yes I know this may be old news!) – including one of the keynote speeches. “For a million dollars we’ll make you Agile. Here’s a list of previous clients whom we helped … Continue reading → The post 1,000% improvement is a statistical outlier first appeared on The Agile Pirate .