Warning: Preachy content. In working with technical people at the individual and team levels, I often find attitudes that pull toward one extreme or the other: Either our work is inherently uninteresting, and we’re only in it for the paycheck; or our work is a boundless source of joy, learning, and achievement through which we can transcend the human condition. Both have it partly right. But I think both are missing a thing or two. tl;dr (Conclusion in a Nutshell) Don’t be put off when agilists seem to be demanding more of you than is reasonable. They like to use…

A tweet from Kevlin Henney in August 2018 reopened an old can of worms: The “issue” has never seemed a Big Deal® to me. Even so, a couple of things came to mind when I first read Kevlin’s tweet: Java is designed to work both ways: With wildcard imports or with specific ones. So, programmers who prefer one way or the other are using the language “as designed.” IDEs don’t necessarily default to specific imports. For example, the leading Java IDE on the market today, JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA, defaults to wildcard imports (well, it makes reasonable choices based on what…

Large organizations are often hesitant to replace very old legacy applications that have served mission-critical business operations for many years. In fact, they are reluctant to modify the applications at all. Why is that? Before answering that question, let’s answer this one: Who Cares? Looking back over the course of the “agile” movement, it seems to me that larger companies began to take a serious interest in “going agile” once the idea reached the Early Adopter phase of the diffusion of innovations curve, and looked as if it was not going to fizzle out. Since then, many large organizations have…

For starters, let me just say there’s no problem with story points. Story points are a way of expressing the relative sizes of stories. They can be helpful for short-term planning of software development activities. Unfortunately, sometimes people get hung up on the numbers, and they lose track of the substance. People can get into the habit of repeating the buzzwords and marketing phrases that go along with a particular named or branded Thing. I’ve noticed a lot of software development teams bring certain buzzwords into their everyday vocabulary and use them creatively (or carelessly). It’s cool for a team…

 This talk covers techniques and approaches to developing and communicating roadmaps to your organization. Balancing Agility and predictability in a roadmap is a challenge, and stakeholders require transparency in order to effectively drive organizations forward. Product teams that efficiently deliver value to market require the flexibility to make decisions using the latest discovery and learning, while giving their team time to plan for the product’s direction. Whether your team is a startup looking to define your product strategy, or an enterprise looking to remain competitive while coordinating across hundreds of teams, this event will deliver valuable insights and techniques…