Chris talks about his work on applying real options on agile projects http://agiletoolkit.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=121123. He also talks about our work on Business Value.
I was explaining the ideas behind burndown charts today. Tim Mackinnon et al wrote a great paper for the Agile Development Conference that I wanted to show them. I really like their simple approach. Sadly the conference’s web site is not longer around.
Fortunately Tim has a copy on his web site
http://www.macta.f2s.com/Thoughts/planning.html
A more indepth look at burn down charts can be found on Alistair Cockburn’s site:
http://alistair.cockburn.us/index.php/Earned-value_and_burn_charts
I will have to see if I can recover the other great papers from this conference. It would be a real shame to loose them.
Alistair Cockburn’s blog is back. Yippie. It’s not a traditional blog, it’s actually using a wiki that he’s using as a blog! Still, it has lots of strange and interesting stuff.
Here is a nice podcast from Jason Fried from 37Signals.com
He had an interesting spin on co-location. I always thought distance hurts, and having everyone working together in the same location was critical. Jason argues that if you can’t explain a design or a business strategy using IM or Skipe then it’s too complicated and you should choose something simpler. This made me re-think my views on this.
It’s a really interesting point of view. I have been mulling this over in my mind for a few days now. I wonder what impact people’s learning style has on this? I’m very visual, I really like being able to jump up and draw pictures with collegues around a white board. I wonder if Jason is more of a words person?
Norm Kerth gave a great talk on retrospectives at SPA2006.
I’ve been a fan of retrospectives for a long time. The interesting thing for me was Norm’s description of Kick-Off Retrospectives.
I typically do this when teams are formed for a specific project (and don’t stay together once it has been completed). They basically run a retrospective to set the scene for how the team wants to operate.
The subtlety I had missed is that you can use the future perfect tense when asking the questions. You can ask people to imagine that this is the retrospective at the end of the project and ask them “What was so good about this project that you would like to repeat on future projects?” This sets the scene for how the team want to operate.
While on the subject of retrospectives, here is an interesting article by Ester Derby on keeping retrospectives fresh
Steve Freeman and I are thinking of using this video clip to introduce the ProductBox innovation game at SPA2006
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=36099539665548298&q=microsoft+ipod
We’re running our Getting to know your customer session on wednesday morning (29th March).
This is a nice story of a team using agile development techniques. They even have pictures of the work environment…
http://www.gamesfromwithin.com/articles/0602/000104.html
Very nice.
Luke Hohmann has sent me an interesting link on how someone used a Product Box to help their stepdaughter buy a car. I really like using the Product Box technique myself.
Anyway, check out the link on Luke’s furums
While I’m on the subject of Product Boxes, Steve Freeman and I will be explaining Product Boxes and other techniques in our Getting To Know Your Customer session at SPA.
I saw a wonderful typo in a recent talk about Agile people being Barley Sufficient! That made me laugh.
Anyway, just in case you have not read Alistair’s paper describing Balancing Lightness with Sufficiency and being barely sufficient.
