Weekly Agile Links 22-26 Feb 2010

This week my link of the week is JOHN BRAMBLITT – THE BLIND PAINTER

I've got plenty of other links that you will hopefully find useful including one that is almost 10 years old, some wisdom from Martin Fowler and Cory Foy's thoughts on the new Scrum alliance.

Enjoy ;)

If you haven't watched this yet - you have to do it now!(Seriously man! It is just a bit of dancing...)

Systems Thinking, The Vanguard Method and Software Development Karl Scotland shares his thoughts on the Vanguard method introduce by John Seddon in his book “Freedom from Command and Control“.

[link of the week]
JOHN BRAMBLITT – THE BLIND PAINTER An inspiring video! Shows what once can do if he is truly up for it despite such a huge impediment as being blind. Lot's to learn from this John Bramblitt!

In Praise of Middle Management Peter Stevens says Middle Management is not redundant in Scrum, instead it is the true source of leadership.

Pair Programming: In interviews Mark Needham on Agile approach to interviews. Very interesting - I wish I can attend one of these ;)

Managing in Mayberry: An examination of three distinct leadership styles This one I definitely should read (not just because it is almost 10 years old). It is a little bit long for the time I have so will require some extra effort ;)

Using Agile Techniques to Pay Back Technical Debt I can't believe this! No, seriously -Microsoft start talking sense! Finally. Remember a link to a PM/PMO lady from MS and her experience with agile? Now, there is another MS guy talking about technical debt.. There is hope I tell ya!

Conversational Stories Martin Fowler hits the nail on the head as usual - a good reminder about PO/Team relationship and how user stories should be created.

The Lump Of Coding Fallacy Interesting thoughts on how to change well known habits around unit testing and those opposing to it also about development in general. worth reading ;)

Leadership Books list by Hugh Ballou

..but if the Scrum Alliance Can’t Do It, Who Will? Cory Foy on the SA, the new Scrum and a few opinions of what they should become. Interesting overall.

The Value of Lessons Learned “Experience is inevitable, learning is not.” says Nancy Dixon - contains some good reasoning behind having retrospectives

Great Minds Don’t Think Alike - Ray Silverstein on leadership and building culture of people not afraid to state what they think (e.g. free of politics) - not directly agile and still lots to do with it.

There's more to done than the green dot Interesting thoughts on when is a story really done..

A simple measure of effectivenes Another one from Simon Baker which looks very interesting to me as it is related to agile metric which I blogged about before