Change Harvesting

Three Short Coaching Pro-Tips

Coaching, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

A respondent asked that I combine these three short Pro-Tip muses into one post, so here goes: Coaching Pro-Tip #1: Everything good about agility is rooted in relationship, so everything good about coaching is, too. As coaches, we usually start from negative trust, and our central priority has to be reversing that position. In the early days of most coaching engagements, one sees lots of issues, of various size and shape. The temptation to start issuing criticism and directives is […]

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Two Mantras, One Theme

Coaching, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

Two recurring phrases in my work are 1) It is like this because we built it to be like this. 2) The code works for you, you don’t work for the code. Two sides of one page, phrased on the front as negative critique, and on the verso as positive encouragement. Before we dig in, I remind you of the relative unimportance of geekery to me just now. This is just respite. Please work for change and support the others

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Path-Focused Design

Modern-Synthesis, Programming, Change Harvesting / / 8 minutes of reading

"Path-focused design", of stories, architecture, code, is design that understands that we can only reach a distant City on the Hill by taking one stride-limited shipping step at a time. Sunday muse-day, comfort food for the geek in me and in you, but please remember, we don’t really just want to change code, we want to change the world. Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind. Black Lives Matter. In the software design theory of the ’80s and ’90s,

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Sharing Configurations

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting, How I Work / / 6 minutes of reading

You can put all your configuration in a shared library and eliminate just about every mis-configuration in your multi-process application. It’s not free, but it’s cheap, and it kills a lot of minor pain. Let’s take a gander. It’s Sunday geek comfort-food time. I hope you enjoy it, and I also hope you remember it’s not the most important story out there. Please keep working for change, once you’re rested. Stay safe, stay strong, stay kind, stay angry. Black Lives

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Re-Orienting Around Backsteps

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

When large teams struggle with trunk-based development (TBD) or continuous integration/deployment (CI/CD), a good strategy is to re-orient how the teams face "backsteps", moments in our workflow where a discovery forces us to re-open a stage we thought was closed. It’s been a hard stretch for those of us seeking peace and equity. I offer this geekery not to suggest it matters as much as that does, but only to give us a little respite. Stay safe, stay strong, stay

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On Agile Methods

Change Harvesting, Coaching, Modern-Synthesis / / 8 minutes of reading

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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The UI Monolith Making App

TDD, Programming, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 9 minutes of reading

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

Modern-Synthesis, TDD, Programming, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

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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A Making-App UI

Programming, Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting / / 7 minutes of reading

Once armed with the idea of a shipping app and a making app, a whole range of possibilities open up. Among the most powerful: give your making app a UI just for making. It’s Sunday, which is geek comfort food day for me. Remember, tho, to think and feel and work outside the monitor. Please help me in opposing the multiple ongoing efforts to suppress the votes of millions of American citizens. Black Lives Matter. A "making app" is when

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Humans & Mistakes

Modern-Synthesis, Change Harvesting, Pedagogy / / 6 minutes of reading

Approaches in software development — or anything else — that don’t take ordinary human failings as their starting point are prone to dramatic failure. "The Impossible Human" is, well, noticeably uncommon. Let’s dig in on that. More geek joy comfort food from me today, but please think & work outside the monitor by enabling and encouraging change in our wider world. Black Lives Matter. Some years back, I made content for a CMS that had a whole lot of overlapping

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