Use Improvement Stories to Make Your Retrospectives More Effective

<plug>I teach a one-day class on retrospectives. It’s in Swedish only for now, but if that’s not an obstacle, you should read about it on the Citerus web site.</plug> I love to use the user story format when I help teams plan their work. It can sometimes be hard to break user stories down into […]

Agile Testing

I spent the better part of last week at the Eurostar 2009 testing conference in Älvsjö, Sweden. I’ve never worked as a professional tester myself, but the topic of testing is gradually becoming more interesting now that more effective and humane approaches to testing are spreading widely. My reason to go to the conference was to meet […]

David Schmaltz: McMethod

In his newsletter, David Schmaltz writes: “I’ve taken an article I previously published and reconfigured it into a format that seems to play into the shrinking attention spans and expanding information need. A Bed Time Story.” David is here to remind us to trust ourselves, not just pre-packaged methods. Here is one of his efforts […]

Thank you, Jerry Weinberg

Jerry, we’ve only known each other for a couple of years, but look at all the things you’ve managed to help me with already. You’ve helped me: See that consulting fits for me, because trying to understand the world and improve it is what makes me tick Become a better consultant, by using more of […]

Centralized Services in Software Development

Reading a blog post by Tripp Babbitt reminded me of Ackoffs discussion on internal market economies in Re-Creating the Corporation. Babbitt’s blog post talks about how focusing on cost reductions often increases costs. One reason is that cost reductions are often approached by centralizing services in organizations. When this happens, a feedback loop is broken. […]