Category: Lean Thinking
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Agile Values and continuous flow
I was asked recently “How do I summarise the Agile Values as defined in the manifesto?” My feeling about this and why do we have these values is because software is about people, not things. It is about We, not ME. For example We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and…
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Shifting Right
We have all heard about the technique of Shift Left, where test activity is brought to the earlier stages of the life cycle. This is a great way to improve product development as it moves testing activities to the left, which removes ambiguity from the development team. This is enhanced with activities such as TDD,…
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Join The Dots
Joining the dots up is a way to suggest that everything is connected. For example the simplest model we can draw is. But the reality is more like this: Warning, this is a simplified view! The reality is that in both cases the most important measurements are the simple ones that apply to figure 1.…
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Event or Activity
We often work with people who have come from a waterfall or gated environment. They have a built in idea that requirements, design, coding, and testing (etc) are phases. These phases have clear start and end events, in theory. When I discuss these matters with them, i explain that these phases are in fact activities…
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But is it Science?
The world of software is a science? An Engineering disciple? A world of freelancers and hackers? Or something else? Is it a science? The Scientific Method (Condensed from Wikipedia) The scientific method seeks to objectively explain events in a reproducible way. A hypothesis is put forward (If we do this, then we get that) and…
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Estimations, a blog from the past
As part of my previous work at HP, I had been working at defining the approach to preparing and estimating features and user stories in one of my client’s projects. Here these stories are prepared through the early discovery events and progress through demand to the development teams. This post describes the estimations that were…
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Beginner’s Mind
In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. Shunryu Suzuki For a number of reasons, the world of Agile borrows thinking from the world of Martial Arts. An example is Shu-Ha-Ri, the phases of learning called copy, adapt and master. While this is an approach to learning, there…
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What is Agile?
We keep hearing different opinions about what is Agile. Those who understand it the least describe it as a series of processes that can be applied to the software development business as need be. Others, more academic refer to it as a culture, and claim that the culture must be established before any processes can…