Hobo Kore Dojo

I’ve a new article published on Mike Cohn’s Front Row Agile web site: Managing Client Behavior for Optimal Sprint Performance.

Adverse surprises during a team driven project are about as welcome as whooping cough at a glassblowers convention. Minimizing the opportunity for surprises comes down to how well expectations are defined at the very beginning and how well they are managed during the course of the project. Unidentified expectations are like landmines in the project […]

In a previous post, I described several of the shortcomings with planning poker, particularly when the tool is used in a context that includes more than just the developer’s shop. Estimating levels of effort for a set of tasks by a close knit group of individuals well qualified to complete those tasks can efficiently and […]

As an exercise, planning poker can be quite useful in instances where no prior method or process existed for estimating levels of effort. Problems arise when organizations don’t modify the process to suite the project, the composition of the team, or the organization. The most common team composition for these these types of sizing efforts […]

The IT radar is showing increased traffic related to The-Next-Big-Thing-After-Agile. The hype suggests it’s “Agile 2.0” or perhaps “Ultra Light Agile.” This also suggests the world is ready for something I’ve been working on for quite some time: Ultimate Ultra Extreme Lean-To-The-Bone Hyper Flexible Agile Software Development Methodology. The essence of all previous methodologies distilled […]

The Logitech webcam software installer doesn’t seem to know what to offer. QA and testing. Still important.

Reading Michelle Symonds’ article “Why Project Management and ROWE Don’t Mix” and Jody Thompson’s response, “OMG. WTF? Pt.4” left me with one conclusion. Symonds is more focused on solution whereas Thompson is more focused on selling ROWE. They both make valid points and I’ve used – even relied on – aspects of product and personnel […]

QA and testing is not easy. Those who do it well deserve good pay. Those who don’t, can make life interesting for a company in unpleasant and embarrassing ways. Case in point: I subscribe to a company, called HomeAgain, which provides lost pet recovery services for people who have micochiped their pets. It’s inexpensive and […]

A Buddhist proverb reads, “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” I have found this to be true and it marks one of the many ways in which my life has been fortunate. As is often the case with proverbs, there is a corollary which is equally true: “When a student appears, the […]