Common oversights in choosing methodology

Changing the way a business operates is a daunting task. It involves assessing and understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the current organization, identifying solutions to the weaknesses without compromising the strengths and, ultimately, changing the way people work. Above all, people tend to be resistant to change — and this is the most common issue that arises when adopting a new methodology.

Articulating the value of training

Training budgets are one of the first to go in a down economy. I first pointed this out in Finding Strategic Learning Funds, but there’s ample evidence to be gathered. When the money isn’t there, organizations start casting about for any program they deem expendable. But the unfortunate truth is that training is the best [...]

Why heroes are bad

Most project leaders have been there before: The hero saves the day, yet again. Everyone is grateful because, obviously, if not for the hero the project would have crashed and burned. It seems so lucky that the team can benefit from this all-star who pulls the project out of the fire time and again. So, what exactly would we do without him (or her)?

Making Scrum work: Common failings in adopting Scrum

Scrum can be remarkably beneficial in many kinds of software projects. But, as with any process, methodology or management technique, when used inappropriately it can cause more problems that it solves. In this article I’ll discuss some of the common misconceptions and “lessons learned” as related to Scrum.

So you think you’re following Scrum?

I have a prediction. If you take the Nokia “Scrum Test” you are going to score somewhere less than 7. That means you aren’t doing Scrum, you’re doing “ScrumButt:”
A ScrumButt is a sort of like Scrum implementation… but some changes that were too painful have been left out… Companies in this category tend to only [...]

Rational Scrum

Recently I tried out a variant on methodology that I’ll dub Rational Scrum. I’ve been trying to put together a few thoughts about the overall process for months, and finally found some time for it.
Just as people have specializations, so do processes. Applying one process to all situations is just as wrong as calling your [...]

Finding strategic learning funds

Training Industry Times recently published some rather disappointing statistics: Over 92% of surveyed business have experienced pressure to reduce their training budget in 2007. Worse, 56% reported that the pressure to reduce or altogether cut training costs were “significant.”
Is this attitude regarding education part-and-parcel of the declining attitude toward education in the United States? More [...]

Whole teams

An operational, successful team is more than a set of interchangeable, anonymized skill sets. Would you buy a car that had never been tested in a safety lab? Of course not, and yet the software industry, particularly the commercial industry (as compared to Military, for example) has been ploughing along without whole teams for decades–a trend that seems to be getting more and more negative attention.

The case for certification

I had to read the Agile Alliance’s position on certification a few times before I could decide whether I liked their position or not. Part of this is that the opinion is not that well written. Getting past that, I came away with these core statements:

Employers should not require certification.
Non-skill-based certification testing procedures have little [...]

Formal inspections: An introduction

The price of software problems is very high: As much as 50% of development and 100% of all maintenance costs can be attributed to software defects. Often, this price becomes apparent late in the software life cycle—quite often after the software has reached its operational phase (after the software ships)—as previously undetected defects are discovered [...]