Leadership
Can you grok Agile without a programming background?
The last fourteen years have been strange. The Agile movement, which was spawned out of the controversy over Extreme Programming, skyrocketed into success, and was subsequently taken over by the project managers who all but pushed the programmers out. We’ve seen the creation, the wild success, and the corresponding...
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Removing external hiring as a tool (Part 3 of 3)
In this post I hope to explain how hiring externally as a tool for fixing problems ultimately leads to a weaker organization. When I began writing this post, I was having a hard time. Whereas the post talking about what a bad idea firing is was easy, the situation is...
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Removing firing as a management tool (Pt 2 of 3)
So in my last post, I wrote about the possibility of taking hiring and firing off the table as a management tool. In this post, I will focus on the firing. Firing itself has two halves: individual dismissal as a way to fix performance problems, or layoffs as a...
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Removing hiring and firing as a tool (Pt 1 of 3)
Inside of Mike Bland’s response to my Project as a Ship post is this comment of how he organized his Google Grouplet: I had no power to hire or, truthfully, even fire anyone. The best I could do was persuade whoever was interested to participate, to give them the clearest...
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The Flawed Project-as-a-Ship Analogy
It is common for a project leader to see his or herself as the captain of a ship. The project is seen as the ship, and the developers are the crew. When storms hit- the project is behind schedule, over-budget, below quality, falling short of projections and expectations- the...
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Spotify’s DNA of Autonomy and Collaboration
Anders Ivarsson, an Agile Coach from Spotify, was kind enough to present his talk from Agile Ísland at our company on Friday morning. It was ostensibly about “scaling agile” but really it was a talk about how they’ve created a culture that prizes autonomy and collaboration. I’m personally tired of...
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Balancing Team Autonomy and Centralized Control
What is a leader on a multi-team Agile project supposed to do when there’s an expectation to make decisions that would bind all teams and for which he or she cannot hope to consider all viewpoints? I often found myself in this position with generally two types of decisions...
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Spreading TDD throughout your company
First, the pitch- CCP is looking to hire someone to come to Iceland and teach TDD with Python for a couple days in August. We're looking for someone that's taught TDD before. We already have people who have been doing TDD for a while now and to support it...
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Python Enrichment and PitP
When I was starting my job at CCP, I posted about some things I wanted to do as a lead. I've been through two releases with the Tech Art Group in Iceland (and for the past 6 months or so been the Tech Art Director here) and figured I'd...
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How wide are your interviews?
I’ve been a part of and interviewed at companies where the interview process was not just long but also very wide- people from different teams and departments interview a candidate. (ie, a Microsoft-style interview process) At my current company, our last two Art hires have had a much more...
