April 2021

On Agile Methods

A couple of days back, I tweeted about SAFe. It created some stir on the timeline, which was great, as I got to see a lot of perspectives. I want to use that tweet as an excuse to talk about something much larger. This will be a long one. 🙂 Meanwhile, I remind you, geekery’s not as important right now as some other things. Please, stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. We are the only […]

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Standup Braindump

The standup is a short recurring meeting used to (re-)focus the team-mind on effectively moving stories through our workflow. Here’s my recommended approach to having standups be useful and brief. The general sequence is 1) address team-wide emergency issues, 2) work story-by-story, 3) distribute new work, 4) address team-wide non-emergency issues. Note that, quite often, there is no part 1, and no part 4. Sometimes there’s not even a part 3. Some general tips, then. 1) Don’t over-engineer standups. Stay

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The UI Monolith Making App

The ultimate making app for a shipping multi-service system is actually a one-machine monolith with a UI. If your team is experiencing the most common pains from working in a large SOA environment, the productivity payback will be enormous. It’s important for me to take a second to remind you that there’s much more to this world than geekery. Please keep working for change all around you, including, especially, outside the monitor. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind.

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Rice & Garlic & More Smaller Steps

My rice’n’garlic advice, "take many more much smaller steps," can be said another way: reject any proposed path that requires a step size larger than the limit you’ve set for that particular domain of activity. Time for Sunday geek comfort. It’s meant to be respite. There are more important things than geekery, so please remember to think outside the monitor. Stay strong, stay safe, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. "Rice’n’garlic advice" is blind advice, for when people ask

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