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Should discovery work have milestones?
Product people often talk about doing continuous customer discovery, which is great. Engineering teams also talk about wanting to do some discovery before building something complex, which is great. But next time someone says they need to “do some discovery”, ask them what they mean by the word discovery. I worry that people are using the…
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The power of ignorant testers
I have always been amazed at the ability of some people to very quickly find a gap in logic, spot a customer experience issue or discover an “unintended consequence” of doing something that is otherwise good. I don’t think this comes from specific subject matter expertise, but rather a combination of mindset, presence and a…
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On leadership surveys
When I was starting out at work there was a huge culture of “leader as coach” and “leadership at every level”. We were all expected to be learning from senior team members and to be coaching and leading each other. Looking back I think it was a privilege to be part of a culture that…
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This is how I assess development goals
This is a long read for a blog article. I will discuss trees, effective assessment of development goals and other topics I find interesting. I hope also to answer the simple question “how do I assess development goals?” Looking at trees When you see a magnificent tree in the forest, it is obvious that the…
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Managers and dev plans
Ongoing growth should be an essential part of every artisan or professional’s work. Our careers and our personal development are in our own hands now. More than that, I believe that as knowledge workers, we have an obligation to evolve as fast as changes in our profession are happening. To this end, many companies have…
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On missing my commitments
One was a minor one. I told my daughter that we would have pancakes during the week and then we got to the end of the week and realised that we had not done so. “So time got away from us,” I thought, “She would have reminded me if it was important and we can…
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Where does depreciation come into technical debt?
I was in a meeting where we spoke about estimating technical value. I said it was a great idea and so we gave it a go. We did a good job of estimating how much effort would go into our new technical piece of work (say, 2 sprints for 2 devs). We then looked at…
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Performance management for meetings?
Getting a team to the point where it really hums is hard, but once you have experienced a high performing team you never want to go back to being in a team that is ineffective, goalless or in a state of unhealthy conflict. I have come to believe though, that high performing teams are not…
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Websites I use
This is just a summary of where I go on the web to find free tools (or more accurately tips and techniques for workshops and sites to learn things for free). Workshop approaches Purpose Site Better thinking and problem solving https://untools.co/ Better collaboration and workshops https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/ Making thinking visible (teaching) https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines Sites for problem solving…
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Ironically, I thought I understood Dunning-Kruger
I like to say that I am someone who tests his own thinking and constantly learns. My assumption though is that as I do so I learn more and that the things I learn make me understand the world better. As an example, I learned that the Dunning-Kruger effect is where: I have often found…
James King 