Let’s try a little Bizarro1 test (if you agree to these, I’ll poke you with a hot krypton stick): We are uncovering better ways to provide the illusion of developing software by listening to others talk about watching people try. Through this (dare I call it?) work, we have come to value: Dogmatic process and …
Category Archive: Philosophy
Jan 04
Use Agile Wisely
For the past few years, I have been bothered by a nagging urge to write a pamphlet on software titled “Common Sense” — an homage to Thomas Paine’s great work. This may be a stretch, and I may counter this point once I actually try and research and draw more parallels — or not. So …
Feb 06
The Agile Parallel
For nations that have known virtually nothing about individual freedom and only ever experienced tyranny, you cannot throw a switch and suddenly declare the citizenry ready for self-rule. Same goes for non-agile organizations. The USA is probably the rarest of rare, in that we actually embarked on just such an experiment in 1776: Can man …
Feb 06
The Agile Uprising
We were discussing (on a mailing list) the Egyptian uprising and the interest in watching to see who/what stepped in to fill the vacuum of an apparent “leaderless” bit of unrest. Will there be freedom and democracy? Or yet another autocracy? I think there are some parallels to our software world. Sometimes I wonder if …
Jan 23
Simple != Easy
In a nice, vintage post from the oh-so-wise Ron Jeffries, as I saw this heading: “It couldn’t be that easy!” It led me to think, possibly a different way to say it… “It couldn’t be that simple!” Because I think what Ron is getting at — at least this is what I believe to be …
Nov 16
Response to “Three Things I Don’t Like in Agile Community”
Andy wrote some interesting observations in his “Three Things…” post: 1. Dogmatism Agile is about adaptive, creative approach to complex work yet amazingly average agilists are the most dogmatic people I know. Part of dogmatism is also treating agile [...] as the all-encompassing solution to problems not only in software development, not only in IT, …
Nov 05
Certification is a Good Thing
I read with pleasure “The Value of Certification” from Pawel Brodzinski, that emanated from a discussion about evaluating employees. Pawel points out some obvious pros to certification, and one big con: It’s objective measurement It’s butt-simple (Pawel didn’t actually say this, that’s, ummm, me talkin’) It’s, and I quote, “pretty much useless” Then it dawned …
Oct 30
Consultant’s Rules?
Wow, it was a shock to read Gerald Weinberg’s “A Code of Work Rules for Consultants” blog. While reading the lead-in to his list, I kept finding myself saying “really?” and “ugh!” I enjoy being blissfully ignorant and sheltered, I guess. Here is Gerry’s list: I will not work for an organization whose goals are …
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