Agile Complexification Inverter

 ... no shit, here I am... taking a break from the redundantly recursive link sifting that is iOS development in the 21st Century.  I can not count the stack pushes I've had since about 11 AM and it's only 6:37 PM still time for a beer and a pondering session... A great story allways starts... no shit, there we were... So at my Day Job <euphemism for what I get PAID to do... but I'm unemployeed> I'm writing a little easy App for a colleague - it's a learning chance for me... and it might provide some value.  I'm busily rewiring my brain (there is some question to its inherent plasticity) at my age - so ONE valuable technique is to get drunk enough not to care so damn much and bang out some crap one night - then in the morning come back and fix the hell out of it.  There may be other valuable techniques... Well, last night I decided that the easy array data structure was just going to have to go... that was simple at first and went a long way - but I'd ...

Chatting with an old colleague about the issues we both face with facilitating group learning environments in the post COVID era we decided to broaden the discussion to learn more from other colleagues in similar predicaments. Event RSVP   -  Friday 2020/Apr/17 @ 2pm CT via Zoom Tom Perry described the proposed event as: In the pandemic era is the agile age of face-to-face communication over? Are post-it notes a thing of the past? How will we re-tool for this brave new world? Or perhaps we should just wait it out and get back to our task boards? Join us for this lively Lean Coffee and tell us where you stand! We are thinking it will start as a Lean Coffee event. .. and what it leads to... we are prepared to be surprised! Join us! David's pre-event Notes & Thoughts Tom Wujec:  Got a wicked problem?  First, tell me how to make Toast.  TED Talk Discusses the need for collaboration in resolving "wicked problems" and the need for decom...

Do you despise updating your resume as much as I do? Are you still waiting for an XML Resume standard such that you can publish the data of your job history and allow all the recruiters to format the data however they wish?  Right - a bot could do that job. Yeah, me too.  I've wondered why the old 19th Century technique of writing a resume still persists.  I've only ONCE applied for a job that did NOT allow a resume upload.  It wanted a LinkedIn URL and a few other bits of data.  I double-checked... nope, no place to upload a 19th C. letter stating all my wonderful qualities.  That's one out of a couple of thousand applications.  One company that had made it to the 21st Century. Since I've been searching for my next team ...  I've updated my tired ol' 19th Century paper resume to an online modern tool... it's sexy and cool.  All the kids are doing it.  Come along with me and let's try out NovoResume . This is a really nice and e...

There are many ways to decompose a large task into smaller portions.  When agilist start doing this there are a few general ways to do such a thing.  Let's start by distinguishing between a story split and a story slice. Splitting != Slicing If you've spent some time with an ax and a pile of wood then you understand that many logs have a naturally easier way to split along with the grain direction.  It requires much less energy to split a log than it does to slice the log. If you've spent some time baking cakes you know that people like to slice cake.  You never hear of a person wanting a split of the cake.  Many cakes have multiple layers, sometimes with different flavors in each layer. What does this have to do with software development stories?  Well many software systems have layers, and it turns out that it is easy to split the layers apart.  For example: the UI layer is easy to separate from the Persistence layer.  Many organizations...

Presented in OpenSpace at Agile Games 2018 for FUN and Feedback. This game design is not focused where you might assume - at training people how to "do" Scrum.  The inventors of the game, Tim Snyder and Derek Lane, are focused upon the experience of Scrumming, the group dynamics of being a scrum team.  The game has been designed, and is being refined with the objective of allowing groups of people that know how to do Scrum, to experience some of the Ah-HA moments that mature Scrum team learn after many, laborious retrospectives.  By compressing the group dynamic into a game with the glorious "happen-chance" cards causing random, yet all too common software development events, playing this game for a few hours can give you the deep insights that may only be achieved after months or years of real-life time developing products.  Learning doesn't require time... * Al Shalloway. One of the core questions Tim & Derek have been pondering:  How does one gai...