In today’s world, whatever we do has to have meaning — it’s not just about money anymore. Some of that meaning can come from working together, with a common purpose. …
Estimation is hard – but worthwhile
One of the most painful parts of product development is the estimating part. Dan Milstein talks (at length) about the complexity of this in his post about why we all …
Value, Speed and the confidence of stakeholders
If you’re considering doing a system rewrite there are a couple of posts that I would strongly recommend you read. The first is by Joel Spolsky about the folly of …
The cargo cult daily standup
Sometimes, it’s so easy to identify patterns of slow delivery, marginal value and poor quality in systems, it’s almost criminal that they have persisted at all. To a seasoned, knowledgeable …
Value: a framework for thinking
How might we think about the potential value of the products and services we could develop? Is there some way of structuring our thoughts so as to more quickly surface …
A History of VFQ: Value, Flow, Quality
Simon Schama’s “A history of Britain” is deliberately titled “A history” rather than “The history” for the simple reason that there are many versions of Britain’s history. In the same …
How to make billions of dollars from spare bits
Happy 20th Birthday, SMS. Wow, haven’t you grown?! Sure, you’re still only 160 characters long, but none of us would have guessed 20 years ago how much a part of our …
Emergent design and the benefit of hindsight
To keep or not to keep? Imagine, if you will, that it is the late 1800s and your team are designing the city of Paris, France. Your brief is