Crisp's BlogPage 18

Added a visualization combining architecture with progress follow up for more complex product development scenarios. You’ll find the complete collection of boards here! Cheers Mattias

Sisyphus, artistry, cult of quality, weaving, broken windows and all the other stuff you have to care about if you want to build high quality software. Here’s my speech on how we did it at Atex Polopoly, held at the SmartBear MeetUI user conference May 23 2013. And here’s the slides: Build Quality In: Stop

I ended my talk on the SoapUI user gathering MeetUI singing the stop the line song. Now it has ended up on youtube. Here’s the text: I keep a close watch on these tests of mine I keep my Jenkins open all the time I see a defect coming down the line Becuse you’re mine,

Good news: Alistair Cockburn is in Stockholm June 17-18! We’ll be teaching Advanced Agile, a workshop for those of you who already have agile training and experience, and want to dig deeper! Register here if you are interested. Alistair is a very inspiring fellow! He wrote the original book Agile Software Development and was one of the people

During the conference Agila Sverige 2013, I – the Evil Coach – made my first public appearance. I gave a lightning talk on how to maximize the team’s performance. The room was filled to the brim. The talk ended with standing ovations which were immediately followed by an early termination of the conference since no one could possibly

Bug lists have the potential to consume a lot of your organizations effort. Bugs drive re prioritization, dispatching, reporting, followup –  even though they might be of one time nature and random occurrence. Whenever I encounter a huge bug list is to I ask which of these the organization will fix the upcoming release and

My lightning talk about Software Development and Tragedy of the commons (“Kollektivt kodägarskap och allmänningens tragedi – eller hur blir min kodbas inte utfiskad) from Agila Sverige 2013

And here is the video recording from the event. My presentation begins 12 minutes and 10 seconds into the film.

Here’s the (almost word by word) english transcript of the speech:
Continue reading

Improvement Theme is a tool in the form of a poster that works as a conveyor belt for continuous improvements once the Retrospective is over.

I’ve been reading a little bit about Toyota Kata and seen great presentations on the concept. In order to make it practical and useful for me I found myself tweaking it and packaging it in a concept I’ve come to call Improvement Theme. I’ve tried this concept a couple of times now and found it to be a good tool to extend improvements beyond the Retrospective and bringing it into the daily work. In this article I describe how to create the poster and how to use it as a tool for continuous improvements.

The Improvement Theme is a poster. I’ve been using magic charts since they are easily moved between the room in which the retrospective is held and the teams wall.

The charter consists of five areas.
1. Name of the Improvement Theme
2. Now/Problem – Description of the current situation
3. Definition of Awesome – How would we like it to be?
4. Next Target Condition – X weeks from now, what has changed?
5. First Steps – 3 slots for three post-its that describe the first (next) actions we will take?

It’s a living document, preferable put up next to the scrum/kanban wall. Once or twice a week the team reviews the theme and agrees upon new actions as they get completed.

When X weeks has passed the team does a review of the theme itself. If they want to continue on the same theme they identify a new “Next target condition”. Otherwise they create a new Improvement Theme poster.

Here follows an extensive description of how I’ve been using the concept as a tool for improvement and a more in-depth description of the different aspects of the poster.

Continue reading

What is quality? Why do it energize us so much? Can we measure it? In a new Smartbear blogpost I trace the philosophical history of quality, and what that might mean for us. Socrates started his quest to find out what knowledge is by taking on the lurking trap of the relativists, Protagoras and Heraclitus.

When introducing agile thinking I usually show the Norstrom Inovation Lab video as best agile example. Though, to make some of the points come across I also show a typical example of a failed traditional project. I have long searched for a short video illustrating a failed project and accidentally found this gem when watching the whole

Last friday, I had the day off. Again.

This was just one of several days that I have had off, not counting weekends and vacations. So am I just a slacker that don’t work 5 five days a week? No, on the contrary! This makes me a better programmer. How? Read on.

Continue reading

Nowadays, when explaining the concept of Agile values and techniques I always start by showing a short and brilliant video from Norstrom Inovation Lab. The video shows how a team successfully delivers an iPad app withing a week. It all starts with an idea:  “Our customers often use their phones to take pictures of themselves when trying

Nyligen så hjälpte jag till med att planera och facilitera en affärsplanering hos en kund. Då jag tycker både utfallet och genomförandet var väldigt bra så kommer här en beskrivning av vad vi gjorde och de olika övningar vi hade. Det var en relativt stor grupp som samlats föra att genomföra den årliga affärsplaneringen, vilket syftade till att utifrån företagets övergripande mål finna vad denna avdelning skall göra under året som kommer. Alla som varit med på dessa tillställningar vet att de kan vara rätt tunga och inte alltid kopplade till medarbetarnas vardag. Jag känner dock att detta tillfälle bröt traditionen, mycket på grund av att de aktuella cheferna fokuserade på att jobba kring det positiva och möjligheter i stället för problem och hinder.

Det var en grupp på 30 personer fördelade i två olika linjegrupper, och huvudmålet var att finna förändringsåtgärder för året som kommer. På vägen mot det målet, en väg som var lika viktig som slutmålet i sig, jobbade gruppen kring sin historia, arbetade fram en mission och sedan en framtidsbild om var de vill vara fem år framåt i tiden.

Continue reading

Agilist these days don’t recognize the true value of proper design.  It takes a master to understand the subtle details that make your IT department’s self confidence melt away faster than ice in Schwarzenegger’s pants. It’s all about design. Interior design.

Continue reading

A few weeks ago Daniel Sundman wrote a blog entry about how to test drive JavaScript with Grunt. Today we’ll talk about how to run your Jasmine Grunt setup using Gradle!

There are no standard plugins for Grunt in Gradle, but it’s easy to add all the code manually. After all, this is Gradle not Maven 😉

We’ll assume that node and grunt-cli are already installed see (Test Driving JavaScript with Grunt).

Continue reading

Jag intervjuas om utvecklings- och lönesamtal i tidningen Chef. “Det blev konstigt att sitta en gång om året och bestämma vilka mål mina medarbetare skulle ha på lång sikt, när vi arbetade helt annorlunda i vardagen. Därför bestämde jag mig för att lägga ner utvecklingssamtalen.” Läs resten av artikeln på Chef.se

Here’s the eBook collecting my articles on building the quality in by stoping the line: Stop The Line – Why it’s crucial to include a human touch to your automated processes

Christoper Avery, a leading authority on applying personal and shared responsibility for agility and performance, returns to Crisp in Stockholm April 29-30, 2013 to teach his public workshop Creating Results-Based Teams. Space is limited. Register now.

This classic blog post was originally posted on Christopher Avery’s popular Leadership Gift blog on November 1, 2010 — you can find it here.

The retrospective is a meeting in agile approaches that occurs at the end of an iteration in which the team reserves time and attention to discuss what worked well and what team members wish to improve.

The basic process for an iteration retrospective is to gather the team for an hour (more or less as required by the length of the iteration), ask the team to generate two lists (what worked well and what the team would like to improve), and then prioritize items on the list.

Continue reading

Few coaches and many teams. How does that work? In the Kanban Kick-start Field Guide you mention that you have kick-started more than 50 teams. How do you keep track of the teams and their status? For our Kanban-coach team, each team really is a work item and, unsurprisingly, we try to see and understand

The number one factor of power is the fear factor. Fear is essential to keep the resources kissing your feet.

There are of course many ways to invoke fear and I will give you my pro tip here: fire the worst 10% every year. “Worst” here refers to obedience, not performance, hell no. Firing a well paid performer cuts salary costs more, so that is just a bonus.

Continue reading

Can you run a conference where every presenter has to present using code? Why not! Meet ITAKE (Bucharest, ay 30-31). A coders delight. Our friends in Eastern Europe, Mozaic are trying out a new conference format where each presenter has to present using code.  Gotta love initatives like that 🙂      

The Kanban Kick-start Field Guide is now available! What is it?The Kanban Kick-start Field Guide is a practical guide to help you kick-start your team into using the Kanban method. It gathers the experience from introducing Kanban to 50+ teams at Sandvik IT. Who wrote it?The Field Guide was written by two lean/agile coaches, Christophe

Hi! Here are my slides Stop Starting, Start Finishing from Aggro Pekuliar. Thanks for attending! And what a cool conference, nice to hang out with a bunch of non-techies for a change 🙂

Christoper Avery, a leading authority on applying personal and shared responsibility for agility and performance, returns to Crisp in Stockholm April 29-30, 2013 to teach his public workshop Creating Results-Based Teams. Space is limited. Register now.

This classic blog post was originally posted on Christopher Avery’s popular Leadership Gift blog on February 9, 2011 — you can find it here.

Why is it so hard to build a well-functioning team?

Often it is because we’re looking in the wrong place for answers.

The most important game may be the one you aren’t even seeing.

I’ll share a critical secret for success. The primary problem lies in what you are (or are not) paying attention to. When it comes to working with smart people in shared-responsibility situations, all too often I catch myself getting caught up in the wrong game — a pointless game. I bet you do, too.

When I start paying attention to the truly important game, my ability skyrockets. And yes, you can solve this problem for yourself as well.

Continue reading

Improving continuously requires to be truly aware of one’s current condition. A lot comes “for free” when using Kanban (visualization policies, feedback policies and the measure of flow). The Kanban board gives a “snapshot” of the current situation, but a time aspect is needed to better understand trends and evolution. That is where the charts

I just love Kickstarter.com! For me it has become the best place to discover new stuff on the web. The creativity gathered there is simply staggering! Kickstarter succeeds in raising and focusing creativity by offering a mechanism to finance projects that is not based on risk-aversion and profit-focus, but on anyone’s dream to create something that they

Finding a bug in your application actually means you have at least two kinds of problems: symptoms and process issues. To deal with quality in a sustainable way, you have to fix both!

Continue reading

Christoper Avery, a leading authority on applying personal and shared responsibility for agility and performance returns to Crisp in Stockholm April 29-30, 2013 to teach his public workshop Creating Results-Based Teams. Space is limited. Register now.

This classic blog post was originally posted on Christopher Avery’s popular blog on January 20, 2011 — you can find it here. 

There is a big difference between being an accountable leader and being a responsible leader. I have been working with business leaders for the last 20+ years as a consultant and speaker, and I am committed to showing real leaders the powerful difference.

The following may sound a bit harsh or pedantic at first, but stay with it and you will be rewarded with important distinctions:

An accountable leader focuses on being able to account for his or her actions and results. As a communication scholar years ago I researched “account-giving.” That is simply the narratives (i.e., stories) we make up to explain what is going on — we give accounts.

Continue reading

Here is a teaser for “The Kanban Kick-start Field Guide“.The document is almost ready by now, with some minor work left on the boosts in the “After the Kick-start” chapter. And, yes, there is a section about Depth of Kanban in there. The Cover of the book (it may change) Key Aspects Due to our

If you’re a TDD addict you know that it’s not always easy to Test Drive your JavaScript. Which testing framework should you use? How do you set your CI pipeline up? Etc…

There are quite a few frameworks out there and it seems like writing a testing framework is what everybody wants to do. I am pretty sure we don’t need any more. We just need them to be easy to use. In this post I’ll show you how incredibly easy it is these days to start using Grunt, Jasmine and PhantomJS.

Continue reading