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Rallying the “troops”: how things can be misunderstood
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…
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Around Here Wiki: put your surroundings on the map
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…
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It’s ok to be second
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…
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5 reasons Agile is like a cult
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.…
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7 reasons your Scrum Master may be underperforming
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…
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Soundtrack: Life – give your life a soundtrack
Have you ever wished your life was a movie? In the movies, there’s always the right sound effect ready to roll for every moment. Sometimes our lives need a soundtrack too. That’s why I created my first ever Windows 7 mobile application called Soundtrack: Life. You can install it on your Windows 7 phone here.…
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Customer Feedback is important
We all know it’s important to think of our users first, and that user feedback is important; however all of us have to deal with products, processes and systems in our day-to-day lives in which the user was likely at the bottom of a long list of other priorities during the design phase. Anyone who…
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Advertising – the good and the bad
We all want to get paid. As ‘free’ continues to become the norm for data, information, apps and services, developers reach to advertising to fill the ‘P’ part of their profit and loss statements. Internet revenue hit $7.3 billion in Q1 this year, according to PwC – so someone must be clicking those ads. With…
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Who cares if you’re doing scrum or not?
Have you ever heard the question: “Are you doing Scrum? I mean, really doing scrum?” Or: “If I take the Scrum textbook practices, but change one or two things to suit my business, software or people, is that still Scrum?” At the Agile Lean Europe Unconference in Berlin yesterday there was quite a bit of…
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Software update cycle: faster every day
My Atari 2600 never got a firmware update. Not a single one. Neither did any of the game cartridges that came with it. In the early days of software, ‘soft’ware was really just a different kind of hardware. It was built, packaged and shipped exactly once. If you shipped it with a bug, that bug…