Agile Complexification Inverter

Pondering... why are gender "neutral" words such as craftsman are not as gender neutral as we men seem to think they are? I've been personally trying to break myself from a bad habit... one that I've thought was not such a big  deal...  I use the term "guys" in mixed company to describe a group of people ... not yet a team.  In mentoring groups toward becoming a team, I reserve that term for groups that truly behave like a real team.  I was giving a presentation at a local special interest group and afterwards a person gave me some useful feedback... my usage of the term "guys" was distracting and verging on "off-putting" in the room of mostly females.  I needed to read the audience and the room - and choosing the proper term would help them to engage... what I truly desired. I remember in the 1970s (yes this should date me) teachers in school told us that some words were considered gender neutral - I believe that "guys" w...

At what age should we be inspecting all this code full of colons?  Sometime in 1970's the software world had a lot of colons evolving - 1973 for the popular C Language and its family... That tells us that in 2023 at age 50 the C Language should begin Colonoscopy procedures, yearly.  It's not a pleasant thought but it is the recommendation. Now some of the more modern (non-legacy) code may not need this extreme level of screening... but how would one know - unless one probes around in all those semicolons. Now, many Proctologist have worked to make this procedure less stressful, what have we done in the software community to improve patient outcomes, and satisfaction with our inspection and visualizations? Jokes from the Hole (A Proctologist's Perspective) Shall we work on that?

Time is something that puzzles me... I tend to "spend" a lot of time thinking about TIME. I don't truly know how to not "spend" time... if you find a good TIME-Bank, with a savings plan... let me know, please. I quickly calculated how much I will spend this year - 8,760 hours.  A few years ago I had a unique opportunity to spend about 8,772 hours while most of you only had the standard year - I spent New Years in New Zealand and got some extra... I think I spent it on the plane flight back to Dallas. Here's a great talk about how we use our time and what we may wish to consider doing with the very very little "free" time we have. The Time You Have (in JellyBeans)

So you have the new Apple Watch - yes, it's quite nice, and you love the convenience of all your notification right on your wrist.  Did you notice that when the VP was asking about the project, as you were describing the challenges you paused, lifted your arm, checked the latest notification that she was a bit put-out by the exchange.  Although you went on to tell her that your team had overcome the challenges with an innovative solution.  The VP disengaged in the dialogue and walked away.  Wonder why? What was the unintended message of your body language during that encounter? Did you signal that you were busy, late for an appointment, not interested in the conversation, that you were dismissing the participant - what did your raised arm and glancing at your watch tell the VP?  Is that truly what you wished to signal? We have had 10 years to learn to use a iPhone and now in meetings you will notice people signaling that they are prepared to engage i...

We are desperately searching for a term for people that connotes the best of human kind.  The creative, sensing, combinatorial synergistic, empathic solutioning persons that have yet to been labeled with a role name that works. Some of the old terms: Staff , Workforce , Human Resource , My Team , Army , Company Shakespeare created 1700 words in his time.  He mutated verbs to nouns, and vice-a-versa, transformed verbs into adjectives, and formed words from whole cloth never before heard.  This skill is rare, but there is a poet that can create the term we need in the twenty-first century. What should this term define? 21st Century Human Resource ; the generalizing specialist. Yes, but what more?  What less? Suggest your poetry in the comments, let us see if we cannot do 1/1700 as well as The Bard. By-the-way; who create the phrase "coin a word"? How Ofter do you use the 10 Most Cringe-Worthy Workplace Phrases? So, if you want your colleagu...

What can you do to save the world with an Amazon Dash Button? Has a new era of enablement reached the hockey stick curve of exponential growth?  I think it has.  I've been picking up this vibe, and I may not be the first to sense things around me.  I've got some feedback that I very poor at it in the personal sphere.  However, on a larger scale, on an abstract level, in the field of tech phenomena I've got a bit of a streak going.  Mind you I'm not rich on a Zuckerberg level... and my general problem is actualizing the idea as apposed to just having the brilliant idea - or recognizing the opportunity. A colleague told me I would like this tinker's Dash Button  hack.  It uses the little hardware IoT button Amazon built to sell more laundry soap - a bit of imaginative thinking outside of the supply chain problem domain and a few hours of coding.  Repurposing the giant AWS Cloud Mainframe, that the Matrix Architect has designed to enslave y...

IDEO-University 'From Ideas to Action' Lesson 1. Join the dialogue on G+ Agile+ group . Dialogue on Collaboration  on Facebook (PDF) Collaboration starts with who we are and our story - not the technology or the data "The Future of Work Is Social Collaboration from Inside Out, where people connect around the why of work from who they really are as individuals in community. They collaborate in generative conversations and co-create what’s next, i.e. their unique Contribution of value to society – what we might call Social Good. They collaborate by taking the time to appreciate and align each other’s unique, hard wired, natural strengths, creating new levels of authentic and trusting relationships to take the Social Journey." Jeremy Scrivens  Director at The Emotional Economy at Work What does dialogue mean... what does it contribute to collaboration? Here's what the inventor of the internet Al Gore had to say about this: Audie Cornish speaks with form...

I've been reading the futurist Ray Kurzweil's latest book ( book's web site ). I find his theories fascinating.  He has quite a record for predicting the future (see ch. 10  The Law of Accelerating Returns - How my predictions are fairing at KurzweilAI.net). Kurzweil's model of the neocortex described in detail in this book,  The Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind, may be sufficient to build a Artificial Intelligence.  This computer mind system may be capable of demonstrating the emergent property of intelligence.  And then by extension the emergent property of consciousness. The sections on hidden Markov models, hierarchical architecture, and evolutionary genetic algorithms are worth reading if your into software design.  If you wonder why Apple released Siri before it was perfect, this book will give you the reason.  Kurzweil and company are the innovators of speech recognition. Apple Had No Choice But To Release Siri As An Imperfect Prod...

IDEO - redesigns the classic shopping cart, ABC Nightline looks at how the IDEO process of innovation really works. Steve Jobs on the iPhone/tablet development sequence - which came first? Sir Ken Robinson (TED Talk) Do Schools Kill Creativity? The Myths of Innovation - Scott Berkun's Lecture at CMU The New Rules of Innovation - Carl Bass of Autodesk, Inc. Innovation at Procter & Gamble

Why do people schedule meetings and work-session into an arbitrary constraint of one hour blocks? Are we not capable of looking at the purpose and expected outcomes of the gathering and then estimating the appropriate duration needed to achieve the outcome? Do we not account for the cost and waste of having to reset context each time we meet and get to a partially finished state. It is the tyranny of the clock face, broken into one hour increments. The clock is just a human abstraction of time, an arbitrary measuring instrument. It is not a prescription for scheduling. I think we are misunderstanding the purpose of the clock. One doesn't drive a car by the speedometer. This obsession of one hour increments of work is ridiculous. I wonder where we learn it. Oh - yeah, school, where we learn many bad habits. See Also: HBR article Yes, You Can Make Meetings More Productive The Hummingbird Effect: How Galileo Invented Timekeeping and Forever Changed Modern Life by Maria...

I'm wondering if there are better techniques or resources for finding new interesting useful words than the techniques I'm currently using. My current technique is to just happen upon a good word - either in print/web/conversation. I have to admit, however, that few happen in conversation, fewer still in print such as news (typically a 5th or 6th grade reading level) - most new words are sourced via books and web articles. How do you look up a word that means, what you want it to mean - yet you don't know the meaning of? The inversion of the Humpty Dumpty quip in Through the Looking Glass. "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all." The web has...

What is the difference between a test and an experiment? I propose that in the 21st century and the realm of software development that these definitions must morph to our needs.  There is little difference in the general definition. Yet many people in quality control or quality assurance departments appear to dislike the word experiment.   Defining actions a person takes to perform a 'test-case' as an experiment appears to rankle feathers.   I find this interesting. Test - (verb) take measures to check the quality, performance, or reliability of (something), esp. before putting it into widespread use or practice. Experiment - (verb) perform a scientific procedure, esp. in a laboratory, to determine something. I would like to define that within the modern software world that the word test have a more specific meaning.  I propose: Test - (verb) a highly repeatable measure to check the quality, performance or reliability of (something), esp. before (somethi...

How does one define an Agile process.  I've heard that mathematics should be able to describe most anything; so here is my attempt at describing an Agile process. An integral equation.  The integral from sprint 1 to sprint N  of teamwork multiplied by the sum of test-driven development to the power of continuous integration plus pair programming plus the summation of refactoring. See Also:       S.O.L.I.D. design principle posters .       Which Agile Process Should You Choose?  a comparative study of processes       A List of Agility Tests During Scrum boot camps at SolutionsIQ back in the day we ran an exercise to map the engineering practices to the Agile manifesto's 12 principles .  The first several groups to participate in the exercise arrived at a set of practices that felt to all as if they had covered most of the 12 principles, but not all sufficiently.  That's what in...

What is better than Google Analytics  (web analytics made smarter, friendlier and free)?  How about web analytics made into an INFO-RADIATOR? Better than Google Analytics Info-radiator of desire. What is an info-radiator ? “An Information radiator is a display posted in a place where people can see it as they work or walk by. It shows readers information they care about without having to ask anyone a question. This means more communication with fewer interruptions."   -- Alistair Cockburn See also:   Big Visible Chart , Informative Workspaces , Information Radiators . Day 2 This concept is a mash-up of publishing information with information graphics and personal interactive engagement. So here is my latest attempt to create one of these mash-ups.  It is an attempt to disseminate information about some Scrum videos and a survey on basic training evaluation (did the learner like and value the training).  One problem wit...

Some years ago Atlassian ran a contest to find the Ultimate Wallboard .  The winner Vodafone's board was awesome.  There are other nice boards there - if you are in need of inspiration to improve your task board. The Ultimate Wallboard - 2010 Ole Højriis Kristensen from the Vodafone Web Team in Denmark was voted the Ultimate Wallboard winner in Dec. 2010. An interview with Ole on the creation of their wallboard . It uses RFID to track the task on the board and projects on the board real time graphs of work in process and burn up rates.  This allows them to integrate with team members in remote locations.  Yet they do not lose the tactile sense, nor the spatial processing that the vision center of the brain do so effortlessly for us. While I'm expecting nice online version of wall boards to keep improving, I don't believe there is a better way to learn Scrum than with a physical low-fidelity wallboard. We don't learn to do arithmetic using ...

Will you buy an iPad?  That was the question in March 2010.  Here is the answer - iPad sales over 14 months. 8 reasons to buy an iPad for your team room. Easy to carry to meeting (compared to laptop and power supply). Makes a person look smart compared to the person with the laptop, power supply, wired mouse, wired web cam that needs to get up and walk around the conference table to get a close-up shot of the white board. Apps that are designed to work instantly and quickly give the information you need without minutes of drill-down menu clicking and searching. Instant on (compared to opening a laptop that has its lid shut - because shutting the lid is a sign that you are present and paying attention to the meeting). Early adopters have acted - now you can hop on the bandwagon. Smiles on team members face's is a sign of a performing team. Have a need - there is an App for that, 65000 of them. Facetime - video calls that just work.  And with iOS5 sync to t...

There are all levels of software development tools.  From project management tools to source control tools, and all manner of in-between tools.  Many new teams starting out want a quick list of the tools they should use.  This is a cheat.  They want a quick fix to their existing problems.  Here's a clue - it is hard work that fixes your problems.  No tool is going to solve your underlying problem. Chances are that your problem is not technical at all.  Changes are that your problem is a human caused problem.  You are not working together, not collaborating.  Adding a tool will just mask the root cause.  But most management will purchase such a tool if it has some good smoke and mirrow hand wavy justification. My first recommendation is to use your brain.  Then use your hands.  Make your problems visible.  Draw them on a white board, or a flip chart or an A3 sheet of paper (11x17 for you Americans) .  Yes use you...

Happiness - the pursuit of happiness has equal weight to the rights of life and liberty Knowledge - the progenitor of many others e.g. law, justice, fairness, virtue; one must 1st have knowledge Imagination - the human animal is unique in its ability to imagine a future and then create it; imagination is required for compassion Pragmatism - a balancing power, a moderator that accounts for context and operates within knowledge bounds David's Personal Values were developed during a Organizational Leadership Master's program (2008). Publishing inspired by Luke Hohman of Innovation Games tweets on the companies values.  So why not publish my own value statements. Happiness . The founding father's inshrined this value within our Declaration of Independence.  Giving the pursuit of happiness equal weight to the rights of life and liberty (Declaration of Independence). Recognizing that while the framers of the republic considered life and liberty an unalienable right...