Agile Bert joins the world of blog.

My far more technical compadre and fellow Agile Yorkshire attendee 'Agile Bert' (aka John) has joined the blogging world.

Will he become a prolific blogger?

Will he become a (thought) leader amongst men?

Why is he called Bert?

That last one actually has an answer: here

Comments

Continuous (Self) Improvement

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” - Leo Tolstoy Introduction: Most people talk a great game about continuous improvement. And as a group, most of us truly agree with and see the benefits of, the concept as applied to our projects and teams. Sprint Retrospectives, Post Implementation Reviews, 5S, DMAIC, PDSA (not the dog people) and so on. But... Do you practice it personally ? I don't mean training courses, formal development plans and all the other bureaucracy that people step through stoically every year in a bid to get a pay rise. I'm referring to the small (but meaningful) improvements we can make every day. Or to work in an Agile principle: "At regular intervals, the team (of one in this case) reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." Step 1: Feedback (aka input to the CI process): Of course, all improvements need to be identified i...

The case for Project Management in Agile?

OK, I know how most of the Agile community feels about Project Managers: Process over People Meetings Documentation Urrgh... But however you name the role (Agile Delivery, Scrum Master, Project Manager) and whoever does it - someone needs to help the team to: Plan Track Deliver Communicate Being a group of incredibly talented engineers does not give a team the right to ignore 3.5 of these. All too often, engineers want to dive in to designing and building great software, but see planning as a hassle, tracking as a waste of time (or an abuse of their rights), communication as an alien concept and delivery (the fun bit) as something that will be done when it's done. It may be popular to talk about being a 'self-organising team' and railing against any form of 'order' being imposed. But why is that order being imposed? Maybe it's to deal with the chaos that your s-o-t has failed to deal with so far. As organisations scale and the senior leadership gets further a...

Project Team morale and how it is affected by YOUR leadership style.

If I asked what qualifies someone to lead an IT Project you might immediately think of literal qualifications; a degree, a PRINCE2 practitioner certificate, DSDM certification. You might think of the practical skills needed to achieve Project Management tasks; the ability to plan, management of RAID/CARDI items, stakeholder communication. All of these things are vital to managing a project, but as we're often reminded: Management ≠ Leadership And projects need leaders. Why? Because people need leaders. Humans are pack orientated creatures and we are most comfortable within a structure that supports and guides us. Within a project the same is true. The 'doers' usually thrive within a supporting structure that takes care of their (professional) needs and protects them from attack. Without Developers and Testers the rest of the project team is just a lot of expensive * flesh. In a mature and capable project team there is a certain joy to be ...

IT Project Management - life on the front line

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