Skip to main content

Dogma?

The world has become very full of new dogmas.  The old dogmas have perhaps decayed, but new dogmas have arisen and, on the whole, I think that a dogma is harmful in proportion to it's novelty.

New dogmas are much worse than old ones.

-- Bertrand Russell

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Agile Armchair Generals

If you're an Agile practitioner of any sort you will understand what I mean by Armchair Generals (if not, it may be an idea to check if you are one..). Apropos of nothing an email arrives that questions the management of your project in terms of whether it is properly 'Agile'. Feedback is, of course, a great tool.  But it must always be understood within the context of the person providing it. So when the email lands questioning the type of contingency you've built into your project or the depth of analysis performed on your requirements set, ask yourself: 1. Has the questioner spotted something you and the team have missed? It happens.  That's why independent reviews can be helpful. 2. Has the questioner misunderstood something about your project?  If so, maybe your communications weren't quite clear enough or they've missed something - it happens, we're all busy. If the questioner has understood the topic correctly and is simply disagreeing ...
Post a Comment
Read more

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...
Post a Comment
Read more

"We are Agile!"

A phrase Project Managers hear a lot, and one that occasionally proves to be at least partly true. As it's most often spoken rather than written, it is hard to know whether the speaker means 'agile' or 'Agile'.  I find that asking the question ('big A' Agile or 'small a' agile?) can reveal a lot about that person's knowledge of the 'Agile' world.  If you find yourself asking the people around you this question and you receive blank faces or confused responses you can be fairly certain you haven't landed in a particularly Agile organisation, rather you're somewhere that has rolled out a buzzword in the hope of improving speed of delivery. Organisations tend to fall into one of the following categories: - Comfortably Waterfall - Fine . This organisation knows how it wants to work and perhaps has reasons why they prefer to keep projects waterfall. - Waterfall but concerned they need to get on the Agile bandwagon - Confused ....
Post a Comment
Read more