William Gill

They say you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. That’s true. You can, however, make an omelet without smashing eggs and getting egg-shells throughout the whole meal. The act of breaking the eggs open is a controlled, thoughtful act. It’s not panic. When you’re working on a new product strategy, fixing a…

The Complete Product Owner Act I: The Product This post is part of the “Complete Product Owner” series. A product owner is the owner of a product: so it makes sense to start our exploration of the product owner role with defining the actual product. What is it? What does it do? What value does…

“Well, you know what they say… when you want something done right, you have do to it your bloody self.” My dad used to say this all the time. In fact he still does. How often have you heard it said? A key turning point for a new manager is, I think, the realisation that…

The product owner is possibly the most misunderstood, or at least the the least understood, role in agile software projects. Just about everyone you talk to, whether a current practitioner of the role or just someone who works in agile projects, will give you a slightly (or greatly) different description of the role, its scope…

In the 1970’s renowned German designer Dieter Rams defined ten design principles that embodied his view of design and product development. He said: Good design should be innovative. Good design makes a product useable. Good design is aesthetic design. Good design makes a product understandable. Good design is honest. Good design is unobtrusive. Good design…

Stop signs are always red. Exit signs are green. Play buttons are triangles. These are patterns and norms that, when appropriately leveraged in a design, can help communicate expectations and function. It doesn’t matter if you are an interface designer working on a software UI, a software engineer writing code or a manger preparing a…

What’s the difference between a cheetah and a gazelle? One is the hunter; the other, the hunted. One stalks and sprints with total precision, unwavering focus and ultimate confidence. The other flees in uncontrolled panic. When we’re exposed to pressure within an organisation, it is normally in the form of a risk or a threat…

The Valley’s preeminent conference for Location-based services, Where (formerly Where 2.0), was on again at the start of April in San Francisco. The usual suspects were in attendance, with the likes of Google, ESRI, MapQuest and Foursquare holding prominent positions on the exhibition floor and presenting several keynotes. I was there of course with Nokia…

Factories must be awfully dull places. Factory workers working on a production line follow a strict process. Work is divided out into narrow and highly controlled portions. The guy working at machine #1 is an expert at machine #1, but not at machine #2 or #3. But that’s ok; if he stays focussed on his…

The creatures, great and small, that exist today exist because they, and countless generations before them, each underwent tiny, microscopic changes that made each generation just a little better, stronger and more durable than the last. Each generation was a measured experiment, and every change was measured against the context of its environment. Those that…

Human beings are naturally complicated creatures. We live complex lives and we interact daily with incredibly complex systems: office politics, personal relationships, government bureaucracy… we are surrounded by complexity. The reality is, though, that much of this complexity need not exist at all. When humans look at problems, we have a tendency to look for…

“Being Agile” is more than following a checklist. It’s more than following the Scrum or Kanban handbook (in fact, it doesn’t even matter if you’re “doing” scrum or kanban at all!). Being an effective and productive agile software development team is about understanding and believing in a set of values, practices and principles. Starting with…

I’m often asked for help putting together a job description for a Scrum Master, so I thought I would post an extract of one we’ve used recently. We are a product team of developers, QA experts, user experience and visual designers and product owners who are looking for someone to help us get better at…

It’s a question that every tech startup or product has to ask itself: when the budget is limited (and it nearly always is), where do you spend your cash? On improving the product, or on marketing and advertising campaigns? To me, the answer is clear: every dollar spent on advertising is a dollar not spent…

I was reminded today of a story about managing people. About 8 years ago I was in my first management job, managing a team of about 15 web software designers and engineers. I saw a key challenge in bringing the team together, inspiring one vision and building a sense of identity and unity within the…

My second Windows 7 Phone app is here! I’ve recently been experimenting with developing small apps for the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem. My second app, now available in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, takes Wikipedia articles in the area around you and puts them on the map. Discover what’s around you with a tap. The…

Facebook was not the first social network. As early as the first dot com boom in the late 1990s companies like sixdegrees.com had launched with services similar in theme and purpose to what Facebook became. When Facebook launched in 2004 from a dorm room at Harvard there were already a number of competing products: Friendster…

As readers of this blog will know I’m a big fan of agile and lean software development principles and practices, but have you ever noticed how cliquey the agile scene is becoming? How almost cultish? Here are five reasons the Agile scene is turning into a cult: You’re either one of us, or you’re not…

What do you need to have a great and effective scrum master on a team? The Scrum Master is, I think, one of the most misunderstood roles on the scrum team. It’s a critical role to ensure your team will perform at their best. An effective Scrum Master is not just anyone who wears the…