What’s In Your Attic?
One of my favourite books is Steinbeck’s “The Winter of our Discontent”. In it, he writes “So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.” I love this sentiment. It can be applied at a personal level, organizational level, institutional / societal level or at almost any abstraction one cares to apply it to. These lovelies in the attic could be ways of doing...
Read MoreAgile and Common Sense
Agile is hard. Agile is mistaken for a silver bullet. This is a great blog post. There is a fair degree of common sense in both these statements. I love common sense. I love it even more when it gets applied to the process of software development in companies. As a PM who made his PM bones using predominantly (but not exclusively) PMBOK-based methodologies, Agile-based approaches worry me only in that they appear to be driven more as a reaction to negative experiences with existing software...
Read MoreLean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
This book was written by a husband and wife team who have extensive experience in software development as well as a host of other industries that have been touched by the lean movement. It is an excellent read. The authors are not shy about expressing their disappointment in how strong the Project Management Institute’s influence has grown over how software development projects are planned and managed. The book outlines 7 principles derived from lean methods. Among these are eliminate...
Read MoreAgile vs Waterfall Comparison
Here’s a very good comparison of traditional software development processes (ie. waterfall) with some newer alternatives (agile and scrum). It is interesting that the author treats agile and scrum as distinct alternatives when many scrum practicioners would suggest scrum is simply an agile approach. In any case, the author’s comparison resonated with me because of how we compared these approaches against each other using a lengthy list of project attributes, all of which are things that the...
Read MoreSome Thoughts on Agile
Here’s some insight I have gleaned from delving into Agile over last little while. While these points might seem overly simplistic, they are key concepts from my perspective: Agile is an umbrella term that describes approaches for software development that are quite different from the waterfall approach, which is very linear in concept, that is quite prevalent in many shops Scrum and XP (eXtreme Programming) are two approaches that are considered Agile Some of the folks whose stuff...
Read MoreSearching for Agility
I’ve been managing projects for many years now. Most of my clients have some project management methodology in place that I am to follow while working on their behalf and more often than not, the PMBOK is the underlying framework for these methodologies. While overall my clients have been happy with the results I’ve produced, when I look back at the projects that went well, I get the feeling that the methodology was in some cases as much of a hindrance as a benefit. I’ve done some...
Read More