Plans are still vital
Building software products together requires great communication. With so many people involved, success depends on how well these partners collaborate. In the last two decades, communication regarding software products has…
Backlog Hand Limit
We've all faced that struggle of modern-day life where the checkout at the supermarket turns into an unfair battle. The minute you start unloading your cart, the race is on.…
Kanban needs more focus
Work In Progress Limits are the main attraction of a Kanban-style workflow. By limiting the number of concurrent tasks in a certain state to a hard number, the team gets…
Strategy needs a sacrifice
Strategy is one of those words that mean something different to different people. There is no one perfect definition, but we generally feel the difference between tactics and strategy. The…
Delegation is a skill
Early in my PM career, I was working for a marketing agency. I was responsible for a newsletter that went out every Friday morning. It was consistently late. They needed…
Solutioning is a tragedy.
A few years back I worked with a customer who ran a WordPress-based e-commerce site. As a way of boosting sales, the Marketing department had come up with a coupon…
Why the Hybrid Model will fail
Software developers love distributed teams. Poll after poll shows this and while you will find the odd exception, the trend seems clear. It's not that the pandemic has shown developers…
The real divide
Years ago, I was visiting a prospective client and was invited to meet the team at a farewell drink at the office. The CIO told me about their remote policy:…
A little less talking
Communication is the core of software development. We shape our solutions through conversations with customers, stakeholders and colleagues. We evolve architecture through debate and discussions. We write code to talk…
Making a business case for legacy systems
Before we invest, we make a business case. We put costs versus benefits, project it over time and when the value exceeds the costs in a relatively short period, we…