Published in Ingeniously Simple·Oct 21, 2021Member-only… something on using an online task board to support new startersThis blog post is about how I have used an online task board to support new starters. …New Starters6 min read
Sep 17, 2021… something on the dangers of a change in managerWhat has surprised me over the course of my career has been the number of times that even within a single organisation — and therefore in the context of the same culture — a single change of manager has radically, and rapidly, changed the dynamic of both my working environment…3 min read
Feb 12, 2021Member-only… something on providing training and supportMany years ago a cousin of mine ran in to some trouble at work. He worked for a large logistics company in a loading bay of a warehouse, and on one occasion as things had got busy he was asked to move a van that was in the way. Being…1 min read
Published in Ingeniously Simple·Oct 22, 2020Member-only… something on upping the number of meetingsIn this blogpost I describe the advantages for a software team of having dedicated ‘chewing the fat’ time whilst working remotely, which maintains the coherency of a team which can be looser than when co-located. A team not staying in touch enough can fall back to being a ‘Working Group’. Who would want more meetings? …Software Development4 min read
Published in Ingeniously Simple·Oct 2, 2020… something on the case for automatic rebasingIn this blog I argue that as a developer working in a team, the more frequently you incorporate incoming changes the better — problems are spotted quicker and you can adjust your work to fit sooner, saving greater pain further down the track. Working small is beautiful. I’ve been a…5 min read
Published in DCC-Coach-Collective·Jun 26, 2020… something more on business value, stories and prioritisationIn my previous post, here, I wrote about Allan Kelly’s first two workshops I attended. This post describes the second two workshops and some final observations. Workshop 3: How do you value a story? The third workshop contained one of my major memories of the course. As a developer there’s been plenty of times where we’ve been asked…Value4 min read
Published in DCC-Coach-Collective·Jun 12, 2020… something on business value, stories and prioritisationI have recently taken the opportunity of participating in Allan Kelly’s online workshops on Stories & Value. I’ve seen a few talks by Allan at various conferences around the UK, and had seen some of the material before, but I found it really insightful, with each week building on the…Agile4 min read
Published in DCC-Coach-Collective·May 1, 2020… something on why I talk about Agile CodeI was given a copy of ‘Uncle’ Bob Martin’s book, Clean Code, about ten years ago now. It seems like hyperbole to say that it had a revelatory affect on my career, however it did; it gave me something of a USP. If you’ve worked in the Software industry for…Clean Code5 min read
Published in Ingeniously Simple·Apr 3, 2020… something on Tech DayAs alluded to in my blog on Sprint Calendars, you will have seen the Monday at the start of a Sprint was labled as ‘Tech Day’. I introduced Tech Day to give explicit permission to the team to tackle tasks that might feel hard to justify to take on in…Tech Debt3 min read
Published in Ingeniously Simple·Mar 4, 2020… something on loggingLogging seems a really dull topic to blog about, but its actually incredibly important and very easy to do badly — it does require some effort, and you won’t get it right first time (guaranteed). At a recent discussion about handling issues a customer comes up against, there was a…5 min read