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Why do we need warranties on projects?
I was given a new technological device for Christmas that I never knew I needed – a cup warming plate that plugs into my laptop. Now I can type away while leaving my tea or coffee for ages without it going cold. The device has set a new standard for decadent features that I previously…
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Learning facilitation (if you are in Sydney)
I run training for people in a lot of different areas and one thing that consistently comes up is the importance of facilitation in just about every area of work. I like to think I am a really good facilitator and that you will get real value for money by getting me to facilitate challenging…
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Research into software development
I often come across research into things such as Agile development, ITIL, pair programming and other areas. But the research is often quoted by fans of whatever the topic is. I am generally too lazy to confirm that the research is sound, so I generally ignore most of it. But here is some unbiased looking research…
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Partner for capability development – Software Education
A lot of the work I do involves building the internal capability for an organisation. And while I like to think I am good at what I do, I don’t have the expertise to cover the full breadth of work this can entail. So I often work with Software Education. You might see me appearing…
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Agile, lean, kanban – more stress for the team?
I had an interesting discussion in a workshop last week. At the end of the second day someone asked me if “there have been any studies on stress levels for agile teams?” I claimed that there should be less stress (which there should) but several of the group replied that there is in fact more…
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When someone is partially right
I run a lot or workshops, so I get into a lot of arguments. Of course, we like to call it robust discussion when we do so. And of course I am generally facilitating rather than debating. So I need to know how to keep conversations “robust enough to be valuable” and “respectful enough to build…
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Estimating the cost impact of risks
We all know that managing risk is important. In fact, Graham Downes recently suggested (in a comment on this blog) that the best way to stop eager young project managers from being “blown up” is to teach them to better manage risk. But even when they manage risk actively, I see a lot of teams rating…
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Talking at the SDC next year
I have been quoting my grandma in Agile workshops recently. She probably thought that “lean” was fat free meat and that “kanban” was probably a type of cake. But she did understand one of key concepts in successful projects: “Never mistake activity for progress”. In other words, writing and deploying a lot of code quickly…
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Why do the good project managers doubt themselves?
I was coaching a project manager last week and we worked through several of the issues he is facing. He was probably hoping that there were some cool new Lean or Agile tools that he could use to deal with some seemingly really difficult problems. In fact I always hope the same thing – it…
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Lifting organisational and individual capability
Rather than just rolling out various changes and reflecting on how they went, we want to continuously grow our teams and our own capability as well. I am happy to work with you to develop a capability in any of the areas I work in. This can be as simple as sharing the techniques I…
James King 