Uncategorized
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Consistency is not a rubber stamp
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…
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Urgency isn’t panic
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:…
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Where Conference 2012 – Highlights
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…
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We’re not a factory
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…
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Evolution and the software Big Bang
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…
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Simplicity
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…
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Focus
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6 principles for a productive agile development team
“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…
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A Scrum Master/Agile Coach job description
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…
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Everyone’s a marketer now
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…