“I use PRINCE2”. “I apply Waterfall”. “I like Lean”. “I prefer Scrum”. “I <3 Agile!”Every project manager has their favourite approach, and some swear by “the one”. But why choose one when you can have them all?
Delivery
Documentation should meet outcomes too
How do we go beyond seeing documentation as a burden and ensure that it is maintainable, reliable and valuable? Documentation is necessary to explain how something complicated works and defines a critical process to ensure a successful software release.
Importance of information management in agile
Do you keep an up-to-date record of the current context of your product? And the needs being met by your product?
Dismantling Silos
A silo exists in an organisation when one group within the organisation has differing goals to another. In most organisations there are groups of people that, usually, have an objective to fulfil by an agreed upon date. For example, the Sales team is set a mandate to increase the number of customers of the company by 10% every month, whereas the Support team has internal performance goals, and one of them is to deliver support within a fixed budget.
Agile Planning
Both words, “agile” and “planning”, mean different things to different people. In this article I hope to provide an overview of agile planning without going into specific implementations like Scrum or Kanban whilst still providing practical advice for any implementation.
Accelerating delivery: 10 questions to ask your team
If you work in digital in the public sector, you’re probably aware of accelerated delivery. It helps to build projects faster, more efficiently, and with reduced risk.
A day in the remote life of a software engineer
More people are now being forced into a remote working lifestyle that they may be unprepared for. I’ve been a mostly remote worker for around two years and wanted to share some of my routine in the hope that some may find it helpful.
When to fold ’em – how to avoid the sunk cost fallacy
Some years ago, I worked as part of a development team on a project to upgrade a tangled legacy system managing a company’s payment systems. Two months in, and we had very little to show for it – pages of diagrams that looked like spiderwebs, a few outages caused by failed attempts to untangle the pile, and a rising level of frustration.
Overcoming Common Challenges with Offshore Development
It’s not a particularly well kept secret that there can be challenges organisations face when offshoring software development, both for greenfield builds and for products running in support and maintenance.
Give Teams Ownership of Delivery
It’s a poorly kept secret that increasing levels of responsibility, particularly with knowledge workers, often correlates to an increase in performance.
