Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we can do it right the first time. Other situations render this nearly impossible. Let’s understand the difference and manage accordingly. There is an old saying that goes something like: We don’t have time to do it right, but we seem to have time to do it twice. Some say the […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The most difficult thing about the agile and similar approaches is the zero-th step. “I’m aren’t sure about this.” Let’s take small steps and learn as we go. Let’s not reach too far and make too costly a mistake.This is the agile manifesto stated another way. There is nothing new here; we […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes—make that almost all the time—the path from the problem to the solution is winding. “We had a problem; we solved it. Let me describe how we found and implemented the solution.”—a satisfied problem solver. Ah, nothing more satisfied than a problem solver just after solving a problem. Listen carefully. They will […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to one another each day. Sometimes, however, we just didn’t sign up for this talking stuff. In Agile Development, we are supposed to talk to other persons. We are supposed to sit next to other persons and work with them. All of us are […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This paraphrase from Through the Looking Class continues to reign in systems development. The title of this post is a famous paraphrase from the classic Through the Looking Glass. I live it most days. The conversation goes something like this: Me: The system won’t do such-and-such. Builder: Of course not. It wasn’t […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In many ways, using agile development guarantees success by definition. I was recently reading of a failed Federal government software program. Of course hundreds of millions of dollars were spent with nothing to show for it. The tale of woe consumed pages. Then there was one more paragraph that stated, “the government […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Now that the title has infuriated everyone…let’s consider what Agile development does for me the customer. In the previous millennium, customers would decide what they wanted software to do, tell that to a group of persons who wrote software, and come back later at the delivery date. Time marched on, as it […]

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by Dwayne Phillips In which I consider what happens in a kitchen and ask, “what was it those guys with the manifesto invented?” For years, my wife has managed kitchens in all-volunteer organizations. For years before that, my wife’s mother did the same. Consider the situation: There is unprepared food There is an end-state—prepared food […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Nothing new under the sun. The gig economy meandors, and some persons get by. I’ve been mulling this post for a while. As a coincidence, The New Yorker is running a long piece on it. When I was in high school, way back in the last century, in rural Louisiana, I knew […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Agile development is not an excuse for knowing what you did, why you did it, and how you did it. You’re doing agile development. You hold a meeting to start a sprint (different methods use different names for this). You sprint! You meet again at the end of the sprint. What did […]

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