Tools don't solve problems, thinking does
Earlier last week I was trying to refactor around two thousands lines of code, optimistically being convinced that the component could offer the exact same functionality in less than two hundred lines. My refactoring was an intuitive step-by-step process that involved creativity and a lot of concentration. Happily working on my code I slowly got into the zone, a happy […]
One of the key and often very much underestimated assets of working in agile teams, whether working on products or projects, is the idea of sustainable pace. In my view, sustainable pace targets at making sure that, even under time pressure, which is not rare in software development, the team remains it’s cool. For those of you who have been […]
Het besparen van kosten is een veelgenoemde aanleiding voor Business Intelligence (BI) projecten. Zo wilde een bekende overheidsinstantie weten hoe effectief de bestrijding van uitkeringsfraude was. Het onderzoeken van mogelijke fraude kost de instantie geld, maar het vinden van fraudeurs levert echter direct geld op. En dus ging zoekt de instantie naar de optimale verhouding tussen het aantallen onderzoeken en […]
On November 3, 2011 I presented the keynote of the Agile Open Holland Conference in Dieren. During this challenging talk I discussed the current state of affairs in agile organizations and projects and the effects of the recent strong rise in popularity of agile approaches. Let’s put it mildly: there’s a lot of work to be done. Death by dogma […]
Om kosten te besparen, een veelgenoemde aanleiding voor Business Intelligence (BI) projecten, wilde een bekende overheidsinstantie weten hoe effectief de bestrijding van uitkeringsfraude was. Hierbij speelde een interessant fenomeen. Het onderzoeken van mogelijke fraude kost de instantie geld, maar het vinden van fraudeurs levert daarentegen direct geld op. En dus ging men op zoek naar de optimale verhouding tussen het […]
To cut to the chase, those of you who have worked on enterprise or service oriented projects before already know this. These types of projects are characterized by a large number of organizational, functional and technically complicating factors. Enterprise software development projects are surrounded by a large number of complicating characteristics and challenges: Many different stakeholders. Projects have many different […]
As agile is becoming more and more mainstream, organization are starting to do enterprise software development project using well-known but fairly basic lightweight agile processes. In many projects this has lead to surprisingly bad result, baffling the agile Certified Pokémon Trainers who are coaching these projects. The presentation below shows a number of accelerators or technique that projects can […]
Vorige week gaf ik – voor de zoveelste keer – training in het identificeren en modelleren van smart use cases. Dit keer bevond ik me in de hippe ruimtes van Meeting Plaza Utrecht, boven het altijd sfeervolle Hoog Catharijne. Tijdens de goed verzorgde lunch werd het onderwerp al snel bepaald door de uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum. Van levensmiddelen, maar meer nog, van […]
In most cases where a form of agile software development is applied, projects are challenged with difficult issues, such as a swaggering scope, unclear and incomplete requirements, unstable software architecture, are quickly approaching dead lines. Within these strict boundaries projects try to deliver high quality software at high productivity – or velocity. This is not an easy challenge. Delivering just […]
Smart is an easy to implement agile process, that is essentially smart use cases driven. Although Smart mixes very well with other agile processes and techniques, such as Scrum, XP and FDD, the process that takes a project through a little more ceremony than you might expect from a number of other agile processes. For instance, Smart suggests a number […]