Monday 26 April 2010

Weekly agile links 26th April - 7th May 2010

Here's an extended week due to me going on a training for several days and then picking up the pieces in all the areas I am engaged with... Due to being busy I have not read most of these so would be difficult to recommend any.. What I can recommend is the Agile Coaches Gathering UK in Milton Keynes in July. All details are here

So my link over the last few weeks.. I am sure there's plenty of interesting stuff that I need to catch up ..


It’s All The Same – Leadership Challenges and Organizational Dynamics by Mark Graban

What is Kanban? Agile Denver meet on Kanban lean software development methodology, presented by Frank Vega and Brad Swanson.

Saving your job or speaking the truth No comment really.. I need to keep saving my job..

Simon Sinek: How great leaders inspire action Sounds intriguing and on my favourite subject- leadership

Real Developers Don't Need Unit Tests Interesting point of view in the era of TDD, BDD, EDD and ?DD..

Why You Shouldn’t Hire the Best and the Brightest Candidate By Michelle Malay Carter

The Role of the Agile Coach Allan Kelly summarizes it for the benefit of everyone who needs the extra explanation.

How One Leads Others: The Tone at the TopBy Dr. Jeffrey Magee, PDM, CSP, CMC.. this is part 7 so perhaps best to start from the beginning (only if it was easy to find it)

WHAT THE BIBLE SAYS ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND DELEGATION and TWO POSTURES TOWARD CHANGE Two interesting posts by Michael Hyatt on leadership and change

2 ideal cases for continuous flow another post about why choose Kanban over Scrum .. got the mesage

Building an Agile Environment this looks very interesting to me, especially we as a team have had the chance to change our environment to suit us..

How to give a talk One to check later. could be useful. these days it is very likely that at some point you will be required to give a talk..

Friday 23 April 2010

Weekly agile links 19th - 23rd April 2010

Another glorious week of link collecting and reading and learning. Wonderful stuff follows, so be prepared ;) My link of the week is a true an revealing story - The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell

I also have a Quote of the week this time and it is about a hot topic in the recent weeks - effectiveness or efficiency? - "You're efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you're effective when you're doing the right thing" ~ Slack

All of my links below:

Good collection of Rachel Davis' Tips on organizing an Agile Open Space I've actually seen Rachel in action and would highly recommend her tips - Rachel and Mike Sutton did a brilliant job at Agile Coaches Gathering last year.

It is that time of the year again and here're two posts on retaining people and performance evaluations. Retaining Employees through Respect and Development by Mark Graban and Want to improve performance? Cancel reviews By Erin Conroy

A Kanban Multiverse – not from LeanSSC Atlanta Karl Scotland's presentation that he was going to do at LeanSSC but couldn't due to the Volcano air travel disruption.

Learning the Basics of Agile Alan Dayley has created a nice introduction - will recommend to newbies from now on.

A couple of posts on Scrum Masters and what could go wrong with Daily scrums- quite enjoyed them as they serve as good reminders..
Paul Goddard's Top 5 ScrumMaster Bloopers
and Mark Levison's Pathologies of the Daily Standup

Doing the wrong things righter?
An article in System Thinking Review on Lean

The story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell - A stunning true story revealing a very much non-unique corporate culture and what it does to people

Why I withdrew from SEMAT After publishing a link to SEMAT's overview last week, here's now Alistair Cockburn's reasons not to participate.

Using Product Portfolio Management to Improve the Efficiency of Teams ALAN SHALLOWAY explains why you should not start an agile transition ignoring the portfolio of products.

Kanban Systems While this article by James Shore is 2 years old I really like the way it presents Kanban - I finally feel like I understand it!

Yes, Everyone Really Does Hate Performance Reviews by Samuel A. Culbert ... one for me to read..

Scrum doesnʼt work in China! ? Bas Vodde's presentation on cultural differences and Scrum. Liked it.

The Art of Agile Development: Estimating Another piece from James Shore's book. Looks very useful for explaining the problems with traditional estimation.

Tuesday 13 April 2010

Weekly agile links 12th - 16th April 2010

Interesting (if not thrilling) week for me filled with both positive and not so positive emotions. We had Bob Marshall @ Agile South Coast at the start of the week and last night I attended NxtGen Southampton for Visual Studio 2010 launch presentation by Jason Z who happens to be GM of the Visual Studio team. As a result I have not been very active and missed most of the links flying around. Yet I hope I have a nice and quality collection below.

My link of the week is The Psychology of Lean Management By Michael Ballé

I hope you find something useful to read ;)

Agility, Measurement,and Motivation A free article by Jim Highsmith, Director of Cutter Consortium

Agile Transformations fail because of FEAR... "Have you heard this before?" asks Michael Depaoli and challenges the statement used by too many..


Agile and Management of Change If you go into the trouble of reading this post by Elderclei Regis Reami you're likely to think - yeah nicely said but unlikely to happen. I am sure it can happen though and one day I am going to write a report based on actual experience!

Stumbling Through Mediocrity I am yet to read it.. which is why it might miss on link of the week.. it seems very interesting so .. top of my to read list..

WHY PRODUCT OWNERS SHOULD CARE ABOUT QUALITY Roman Pichler with another good (and short) article to help shape the PO role.

The product owner and the product-shaped hole What the product owner needs to worry about according to Jeff Patton. One for me to read later on.

Agile Record A new magazine. Looks promising.

[link of the week]
The Psychology of Lean Management By Michael Ballé, author of The Lean Manager. Kind of long but a must read really.. if I managed to survive it I am sure you'll do too;)

SEMAT - Software Engineering Method and Theory by Mark Levison.. another manifesto.. similar to the software craftsmanship idea

Tuesday 6 April 2010

Weekly agile links 6th - 9 April 2010

Here we go again, I actually had a day off on Friday and a nice long holiday so finally getting time to publish last week's links. I hope you find something useful ;)


8 Tips for Performance Metrics Jurgen Appelo again with some extracts from his book. Re-confirms my thoughts on performance measurement.

The Agile Manifesto… and status report John Mortimer re-reads the agile manifesto every year so here's his 2010 verdict

The Failure of Failure An HBR article by Michael Schrage on the different types of failure

A Simple CST Application Process On 6th April the Scrum Alliance Board of Directors approved a new CST application process and this is the link to it.

Pluralcast #12 : The Future of Scrum with Ken Schwaber Interesting comments on what happened between Ken and the SA and an unfortunate word used to describe Scrum ;)

Top 150 Management & Leadership Blogs Another entry by Jurgen Appelo - this time he used his own algorithm to create a top of leadership blogs. Good idea - I know what to read now.

Achieving Fast, Flexible Flow Brian Lawley on product management and how to make it leaner.

The Case for Sprint Preview Meetings We call them pre-planning, requirements workshops or something else - Charles Bradley comes up with a new name.

Listening is a Top Leadership Skill Hugh Ballou explains why listening is so important. I like this transformational stuff ;)

Better Software March/April 2010 This issue has several interesting articles including one by Mike Cohn, some interesting exploratory testing stuff and one on collaboration.

THE INFLUENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ON SOFTWARE QUALITY: AN EMPIRICAL CASE STUDY A pdf containing a study by MS people apparently. A bit too long for me with the time I currently have but worth reading later on so here's a good place for me to store the link.