Friday 20 August 2010

Weekly agile links 23rd - 27th August 2010

Well, here's my second week of holiday for this year.. and a long list of links is ready to be published. Next week I am off (kind of a annual reset phase) and hopefully should be back with more links after the break.. ;)

Enjoy!

Agile release pattern: Feature-on/off-switch Nice suggestion by Johannes Brodwall - would be very useful to have it for every feature!

Motivation from the Mosaic Project Services Pty Ltd Blog. Mainly discusses Dan Pink's talk

Middleware Management pitfalls 8. Application immaturity by Sander Hautvast

Using the Class of Service Concept To Optimize Flow, Manage Risk, and Increase Predictability Nice guide to Class of service by Jeff Anderson

The Fallacy Of ReUse Udi Dahan explains why 'getting things done faster' is not aid too much by code reuse.

Seth Godin Gives Up on Traditional Book Publishing Some Lean Thinking applied by Seth Godin...

The Benefits of Making the Shift to Student-Centered Teaching Training from the back of the room applied to colleges and unis... yes, it does make sense!

5 Danger Signs of Frozen Thinking Tim Berry explains it in simple words... yeah read carefully and think again..

The One With The Fifty Percent Resources Geoff Watts on multi-tasking and treating people as resources.

Creating and Sustaining Agile Culture Janet Gregory presenting @ Skillsmatter.

Don’t Call Me a Guru, Dammit! Rick Ladd republishes a few years old article/interview with Mr. Ackoff from the telegraph - Anti-guru of joined-up management

Khan Academy deserves a link purely for the great collection of training videos it is. Thanks for sharing.

Some thoughts on Senior management by Seth Godin

The Hole in the Soul of Business Every organization is “values-driven.” The only question is, what values are in the driver’s seat? - this is an article about business and values and a must read one.

Watching “agile” move from a common-sense philosophy to an organized, detailed practice A very long and intriguing article by Edward Yourdon on the eveolution of agile.

Re-imagining Agile part 1: Why it shouldn't be done, and how to do it This one seems to be discussing the principles of Agile software development - have not read it yet though.

Tuesday 17 August 2010

Weekly agile links 16th - 20th August 2010

The Most Important Thing You need to read this article by Jack Uldrich. It is very important for our future.

Agile Coaches Dojo workshop presentation by Rachel Davis

A reminder: Deming's 14 points or guide to transforming into a lean company - invaluable.

On Improv, Agile, and Fear at Agile Coach Camp Canada 2010 report by Todd Charron

Four Team Self Awareness Discussion Activities This goes straight to my favourite links. Seems like a good collection of activities that can be used on many occasions.

Project Communication Plan - How to prepare for it? Could be useful in not so Agile environments or can simply serve as reminder of what useful information might be required.

3 Project Recovery Methods This has some PMI stuff in it but again could be useful at some point.

Setting the Record Straight: I Love Scrum Alan Shalloway, CEO Net Objectives about Scrum and other methods. Interesting read.

Small Changes – Small Improvements Ketil Jensen with some ideas about Kanban and the move from Scrum.

Agile Brushstrokes: The Art of Choosing an Agile Transition Style - Joshua Kerievsky on transition options.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Weekly agile links 9th - 13th August 2010

Agile coaching tips: make the planning poker easier and more visual Jean Claude GROSJEAN of Valtech gives us some tips to improve planning poker estimation.

Should we adjust the time box in Scrum? Some reasoning to help explaining why the answer is no.

Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model A step by step guide to J. Kotter's change model (from his book 'leading change')

Little's Law explained and with examples. good find.

Facilitation activities A list of facilitation methods. Perhaps more than you can read in a year!

The World of Work Will Witness 10 Changes During the Next 10 Years according to Gartner “Work will become less routine, characterized by increased volatility, hyperconnectedness, 'swarming' and more”.. very agile-ish, collaborative culture-ish as well

Output-Based Agreements: assuring the customer that agile delivers Grant Rule's notes from his 5 min talk at NonAgile2010

Why Not to Focus on a Company’s Culture Alan Shalloway with some thoughts based on the book Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions by David Mann

That’s the trouble with targets Glyn Lumley has not featured for some time but here he is again with some useful explanation about the issues with targets.

Becoming an Effective Coach I recently found this wiki and am posting a link to one of the first articles I've read there.

Monday 2 August 2010

Weekly agile links 2nd - 7th August 2010

Looks like being in India does not mean articles are getting fewer. Due to jet lag and food lag I am only able schedule the publishing on Sunday so hopefully (if I calculated zones correctly) it will be available at some point on Monday,

I hope you find something useful - Happy reading!

Leading from behind A short one, more like advice.. similar idea to training from the back of the room.

We’re not Japanese and we don’t build cars I couldn't help citing Konosuke Matsushita: “We are going to win and the industrial west is going to lose: there’s nothing much you can do about it, because the reasons for your failure are within yourselves. Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses and into the hands of labour. We are beyond the Taylor model.”. Read this article - and try to understand it.

Building Trust on Agile Teams by Rachel Davis - useful thoughts on building trust - again a mention of Patrick Lencioni's excellent book

The economics of value and localism Another article by professor John Seddon. I wish more people who make public sector decisions read & understand it.

The System Behind the behaviour I love these kind of stories .. this time it is by Ester Derby and published in Better Software

5 CMMI misconceptions in the agile community Assumptions, misconceptions.. they usually are at the bottom of every conflict.. Looks interesting though not sure how relevant is CMMI in todays world.

Stop starting and start finishing Jason Yip gives some tips on how to start doing large and complicated tasks.

Forget Brainstorming I have recently said that in front of a friend and he questioned why? I think Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman give far better answer than I did.. I just happened to have experienced great results with a modification of the traditional brainstorming. This article goes further than that- very interesting read.