Category Archives: software

Defect handling in an Agile approach

Software, as any complex product, will have defects. Plain and simple, no point in denying the facts. That said, the question is how can we handle them. First and foremost we should obviously strive to have as few as possible … Continue reading

Posted in agile, communication, development, kanban, management, product owner, scrum, software | Leave a comment

Retroflection – Why are you reporting to the Scrum Master in your stand-up?

Retroflection is a project started nearly 2 years ago by Yves Hanoulle. The idea is to (frequently) tweet something to think about, related to agile software development. Today’s tweet: “question 658 Why are you reporting to the Scrum Master in your … Continue reading

Posted in agile, scrum, software, twitter | 2 Comments

Lean Kanban 2011 impressions

I attended the Lean Kanban 2011 conference earlier this week and aside from the great sessions, a couple of things really struck me. So rather than giving a content replica of sessions I attended, this is all about observations and … Continue reading

Posted in agile, event/conference, kanban, scrum, software | Leave a comment

Starban

I have always been fascinated by Starbucks and how they operate their stores. On a macro level they are very similar to McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts and others of that breed, in the sense that their main focus is real estate. … Continue reading

Posted in agile, kanban, personal, software | 2 Comments

Form and Function

“If you analyze the function of an object, its form often becomes obvious,” – Ferdinand Porsche. Mister Porsche was probably not thinking about software development or business processes as we know them today while saying that but somehow the quote … Continue reading

Posted in business, software, strategy | Leave a comment

The open source question

I’m tired. Tired of hearing yet another big bozo speech about how we will move to open source and how that will magically reduce our costs and make our software better. Gentlemen (and those few ladies who end up reading … Continue reading

Posted in development, leadership, management, software, strategy | 9 Comments

Embracing failure

The most burning question a business generally has for engineers is “when will it be finished”.  They are looking for a specific date and often a specific plan for how you’ll get there. They would most likely be overjoyed if … Continue reading

Posted in agile, development, management, software, strategy | 3 Comments

don’t take it personal…

In the scrum world there are various roles. There are team members, a scrum master, a product owner and stakeholders. Each of these have their own specific aspect to deal with and all serve a distinct purpose. Obviously, it’s pretty … Continue reading

Posted in agile, management, product owner, scrum, software | 1 Comment

Technical Debt

Technical debt is a concept which I never fully realized how accurately it is named. (I have to thank some colleagues for listening and discussing this subject on several occasions) For those not ‘in the know’…technical debt refers to dirty … Continue reading

Posted in development, product owner, software | 1 Comment

Programming language

I was browsing through some resumes lately and besides the standard templates and paragraphs everybody has, there was one thing that jumped out. In the languages paragraph, one person was claiming to be fluent in the following languages: Dutch, French, … Continue reading

Posted in communication, language, software | 2 Comments