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Finally launched my agile training game
We set up a stand at the recent Software Development Conference to run the Agile Release Planning Game I designed. It seemed to go down really well, so I have decided to make the game available publicly if anyone is interested in using it. In the game, participants are a group of scientists and engineers…
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Delegation part 1
I believe that a lot of decision making is negatively impacted by unclear delegation. The result is that both the delegator and delegatee (if such words existed) want the right outcome and behave intelligently – but act on different information or assumptions. So it should help when delegating decisions to a group, if you am…
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Bias and decision making
According to a recent article by Mckinsey, only 28% of the managers they surveyed thought that their organisations generally made good decisions. That’s a pretty scary statistic if one of the most important things we want management teams to do is to make good decisions. The article explains some of the common causes of bias…
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Talking about business analysts and agile
I am off to the Software Education conference next week to talk about the areas where I see agile projects stumbling. You can still book a place at the conference if you are fast and can be in either Sydney or Wellington at the right time. The theme of the conference is business analysts and…
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They need to fix accountability
My favourite comment for the week was me and a friend talking about a project we were consulting on. We agreed that “they need to fix their accountability”. While we might be right, we realised that it is a bit wimpy to suggest that someone else has to fix accountability for a project you are…
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Argumentum ad waterfallium
Argumentum ad hominem is a cool Latin phrase I read in a book called “How to win every argument – the use and abuse of logic”. The book is written by Madsen Pirie and while I don’t know if it is still in print, I do know its on the shelf at the Chattswood Library…
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Vacancy for an agile trainer in Australia
I do a lot of work with Software Education and I can vouch for them as an excellent group to work with. So I thought it would be worth mentioning that they are looking for a new trainer to deliver a range of courses in agile development. You will need to be charismatic, experienced and…
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Minor rant from James – what happened to the customer
I just posted this on another site, so I didn’t want to repeat it all here. The article is at this simple english heading: http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=2221192&discussionID=13508554&sik=1265408037120&trk=ug_qa_q&goback=.ana_2221192_1265408037120_3_1 As you would (not) guess from the wording of the link, I am wondering why we still debate the involvement of the customer in our IT projects. We adopt every…
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Small experiments vs planned execution of change
I am working with a client who has a whole continent full of different “tribes”, all of whom are going agile and all of whom have huge change agendas on at the moment. So I am working on a change management plan to help the organisation roll out consistent approaches to IT development and to…
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Working in virtual worlds – and getting away from it all in the real world
I just got sent this link to an article in Scientific American. Its about “gold farmers” from the third world. These enterprising workers join online games and spend time playing the game in order to amass treasure or experience that they can then sell to others for real money. There are already property speculators in…
James King 