This is a pretty simple workshop which I ran at Agile 2011 and have run as part of my BDD tutorial since. It usually gets people thinking differently, so I thought I’d share it with you too. Some teams have taken this away to use as another retrospective format, and I’m always fascinated by the stories that come out! It can often lead nicely into ( Read more... )

A lot of times when I go to conferences, I’ve already got a slew of half-formed ideas and thoughts from the amazing communities with whom I hang out. The conferences have been fantastic for helping me refine and validate those ideas, but it’s been a while since I’ve come across anything genuinely new.

LSSC 2012 was very, very different - ( Read more... )

Every now and then, someone comes up with a new way of looking at the world that becomes the next fashionable thing to do. Every time I’ve seen this, there’s usually a space of time in which a lot of people say, “Meh, it’s irrelevant”, or “Meh, consultants”, or “Meh, they’re only in it for the money.” After a while, things settle down and everyone ( Read more... )

We have a strange desire for control.

I was in a planning meeting with my project manager and several of the devs. “What happened?” the project manager said. “Why did this one story take so long?”

“There was some functionality we needed and didn’t know about,” I replied. “We managed to get it in before the deadline, though.” The business had been ( Read more... )