Agile Complexification Inverter

 Here is the set up of the classic joke: A human brain, a dolphin brain, a octopus brain, and an  ant brain walk in to a bar.... Well that will not happen... but 4 diverse experts studying those creatures brains did walk into an interview and this is what came out of it. "Redefine 'Man',  redefine 'Tool', or accept chimpanzees as human." -    Louis Leakey PARTICIPANTS: Simon Garnier, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Frank Grasso, Denise Herzing MODERATOR: Faith Salie

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...

Concept of Product Development Flow "I believe that the dominant paradigm for managing product development is fundamentally wrong.  Not just a little wrong, but wrong to its very core.  It is as wrong as we were in manufacturing, before the Japanese unlocked the secret of lean manufacturing.  I believe that a  new paradigm is emerging, one that challenges the current orthodoxy of product development."  -- Donald Reinertsen Reinertsen goes beyond the advance ideas of lean manufacturing, what he calls Flow-Based Product Development. Scrum was sparked by a paper called The New New Product Development Game by  Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka (1986).  Are you seeing a synergy of ideas? Lean principle of Flow In the manufacturing world Toyota exemplifies the achievements one may obtain in 50 years of practicing a new mindset of principles.  Manufacturing deals with repetitive tasks predictable processes to produce component parts, hom...

One can not manage Time . Why we talk like this is possible, might just lead to a billion dollar self help industry. Or we could invert the way we talk and think… Scheduling Your Energy, Not Your Time   By Scott Adams Yes that Scott Adams! In that short article Scott give you his secret to  success - it's basically free.  Now you could go out and buy a book like one of these to get other advice about your time usage.  Or - you could start by taking his (free) advice ... the decision is yours; but it's past time to make it. The Time Of Your Life | RPM Life Management System  $395 by Tony Robbins 100 Time Savers  (2016 Edition) [obviously time sensitive information] Tell Your Time: How to Manage Your Schedule So You Can Live Free  by Amy Lynn Andrews See Also: I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional  by Wendy Kaminer.     "The book is a strong critique of the self-help movement, and focuses criticism on ot...

What do you think & feel about personality and behavioral assessments?  Are they useful to you?  Can you share them with others to help improve your relationships?  Do you have the courage to put your personality on display for your collaborators to inspect? Well I thought I'd try to open the kimono to see if it helps me... I've studied Psychometric assessments and some I find useful, some I feel are just a step to the left from astrology charting.  Yet might not be harmful for self reflection.  I've also found that it takes an expert to explain the tools and reports such that a layperson can understand and make positive use of the assessment and it's report.  And while I've been "certified" is some of these tools/technique I do not practice them enough to be competent - and my pitch is akin to a snake-oil salesman. One issue with these assessments was made clear to me when I heard the Invisibilia NPR show on The Personality Myth.  "We lik...

Agile Tetrahedron - ver 1 Who can explain the classic Project Management Triangle?  I've found that everyone has heard of it and uses it fairly well in a sentence. But when it comes to actually explaining the analogy to the triangle the struggles begin.  Some call it the iron triangle - as if nothing can stretch or shrink it's features once set.  I created a plastic triangle that was adjustable to illustrate the nature of negotiation of each of the sides. I want to move beyond the classic three variable problem of the project (scope, schedule & cost) and envision a model that describe the value that a project represents while maintaining the constraint relationship that these classic triangular relationships represent.  Enter the Tetrahedron - a platonic solid.  The tetrahedron has four faces, each face is a triangle, it is the simplest form of a pyramid with the base in the form of a triangle. Highsmith's Agile Triangle Jim Highsmith introdu...

Watch this video ( Can You Solve This? by Veritasium ) to see the scientific process in action (well it takes a while for the people to become scientific... but they do).  My guess is that you - like me - will fall into the fallacy of confirmation bias at the first opportunity.  A phenomena referred to as the black swan fallacy. So scientific processes have a little trick up their sleeves called the Null Hypothesis .  The null hypothesis, or default answer, is generally assumed true until evidence indicates otherwise.  How often do you use this process to mutate your software development process?  How do you protect yourself from the confirmation bias during your process improvement experiments?  Do you see this null hypothesis at work in the TDD process of proving a unit test fails before the implementation code creates evidence to indicate otherwise? France is Bacon Since this scientific process is not very natural for us humans; it leaves ...

I wonder how one defines culture?  Do we define culture at a human scale or is it typically at a social scale?  What happens when we look at culture at various scales? I've heard some suggest that culture is an emergent property of a collection of people interacting frequently.  And while I agree with that, they have also stated that culture cannot be designed.  Now that's a conundrum.  I believe one can design an emergent property of a system.   Perhaps the word for this type of action is cultivation.  One could very well cultivate a culture where the best intentions of a group were positive or negative.  Looking at recent news articles and the popular opinion is that Uber's culture was cultivated, and that it may be changed (manipulated toward a better culture).  This same type of cultivation is happening in Hollywood in 2018.  Perhaps it will bleed into the USA business culture. It appears to me that there are three basic scales f...

This tech is so exciting it scares me... tapping into human emotions.... the feedback loops that could be developed.... the opportunities to learn....  endless! Affectiva , a startup, is announcing the launch of its mobile software development kit (SDK) for tracking emotions. "The company says it can analyze a user’s emotions by tracking their facial expressions, and it uses that technology to measure the effectiveness of ads. With the new SDK, mobile developers will be able to add these capabilities to their apps as well." -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha "This means Affectiva’s technology could be embedded into consumer products — a spokesperson suggested via email that the possibilities include healthcare, education, and gaming apps."  -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha See  -- TechCrunch Anthony Ha article How could we use this tech (SDK) to nurture better teams?  Reinforce positive sharing and interaction behaviors for a group of people (geeks) that love to intera...

Agile Tetrahedron Model I was in a workshop just the other day and asked if everyone was aware of the dynamics of the classic project management iron triangle.  While most people had heard of it, it was apparent that few actually understood the dynamics of the model. For a better model than the PM triangle see the Agile Tetrahedron. Perhaps a physical model of the PM triangle would help people to grasp the meaning.  So let's build an adjustable Iron Triangle out of something.  It needs to be inexpensive, made from common items, and build-able in 20 minutes. Here's is how to make a PM iron triangle out of plastic drinking straws. You need: Straws - the bendable kind - multi-colored. Scissors I used 3 yellow straws for the flexible corner pieces.  Cutting the straw just about 2cm beyond the flex on each side.  I cut the straw at an angle.  This makes assemble easier, as you must crimp and slide this piece into...