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March 25, 2007 by mensming.
I attended a breakfast presentation by Steve McConnell (http://www.construx.com) entitled “Legacy of Agile Software Development”. A phrase that caught my attention was “creating opportunities to incorporate change”.
As we all know, The Agile Manifesto (http://agilemanifesto.org/) states valuing “responding to change over following a plan”. Steve’s presentation summarizing agile values had “responding to change” struck out and replaced with “creating opportunities to incorporate change. This struck a chord with me. I have seen many teams that call themselves agile (although I would argue that they were not…) who were resistant to responding to customer requests. Usually, they delay the request stating some rule of the methodology they are following. Almost always, the methodology would allow them to respond to the change — “create the opportunity to incorporate change” — yet the team resists. You can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.
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March 23, 2007 by mensming.
Last week, I attended an ASQ dinner meeting where the speaker was Izzy Gesell (http://www.izzyg.com/). The title of the talk was “Tools for Transformation”. I think I would have named the talk “Lessons from Improv”. Izzy is a former improvisation artists and he applies the lessons and techniques from improvisation to the business world.
Izzy’s talk was dynamic and interactive. I took away 3 items which can be applied to a software (or any other) team:
- Acceptance - Accept what is given and move forward
- Focus - Concentrate on the essential
- Trust - In the process and the people
The idea behind acceptance is instead of complaining or trying to change the unchangeable, it is more productive to take what is given and move it to the next level. This does not necessarily imply agreement. Concentrating on the essential - Focus - I believe is a key attribute of all the successful teams I have been a part of. In the case where the team was not performing well, a lack of focus was definitely a component. And finally trust. Once again, the best teams operate in a an environment of trust.
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March 16, 2007 by mensming.
I came across a reference to a Google custom search engine focused on process improvement and software engineering created by Gupta Boda.
PRISE - PRocess Improvement and Software Engineering (alpha)
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