Following this checklist from Youngme Moon is guaranteed to help you squash imagination, innovation, and out-of-the-box thinking, turning your employees into cogs in your great machine.
Already work in one of those places and don’t have speakers? Here’s the list:
Play it safe. Listen to that inner voice
Know your limitations. Don’t be afraid to pigeonhole yourself.
Remind yourself: “It’s just a job.”
Show you’re the smartest guy in the room. Make skepticism your middle name.
Be the tough guy. Demand to see the data.
Respect history. Always give the past the benefit of the doubt.
Stop the madness before it can get started. Crush early-stage ideas with your business savvy.
Been there, done that. Use experience as a weapon.
Keep your eyes closed. Your mind too.
Assume there is no problem.
Underestimate your customers.
Be a mentor. Give sound advice to those who work for you.
This is the recording of the Introduction to Kanban webinar I did last week along with the slides. Newsletter subscribers found out about it first and got the recording 5 days before it went public. I’ll be doing this for some of the webinars in the future – announcing them exclusively via the newsletter. To hear it first, sign up. I only send out good goodies – no spam here my friends.
Enjoy the webinar!
Webinar Video
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Yesterday at SXSW I had the great fortune to catch up with a friend I hadn’t seen in quite a while – Gustin Prudner. Gustin is the founder of Entryway, a software development firm in Floyd, Virginia. Though our topics of conversation ranged, one subject we spent a good amount of time on was that of software craftsmanship, and bringing engineering practices back to software development teams.
Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely a number of teams that are highly focused on delivering quality and do. However, for everyone one of them, there are more than a handful that do not. And there is enough blame to spread around. So let me begin to lay it thick by starting with a story.
And In The Beginning…
When I was doing my CS degree we did not encounter testing until our senior project – the very last class we had to get our degree. We had to write an extensive suite of automated tests, and pulled it off. However it was only a few of the more than 20 people in the class that wrote them. For the rest it was out of sight out of mind.
When I came to the Ruby on Rails world, I was told that testing was very important, and that Rails even created a folder that I could use to hold them. Testing frameworks weren’t as extensive as they are today (way back 5 years ago), however Test::Unit worked well, though I used it only a bit. Much of my testing was still done manually. And I, as many do, taught myself Rails by purchasing a book, trying things out, hitting the forums, and just messing up.
When I discovered the world of Agile and Scrum, I heard about this other practice called Extreme Programming (XP) that taught TDD, continuous integration, pair programming, and other engineering practices. However because they weren’t part of Scrum, I didn’t see a large number of people practicing them. Mainly I think it was from a misunderstanding of subjects like pair programming and the real benefits that can be gained.
Takin It Back Baby
So the problem goes way back to school and the testing that was missing from the program. Sure I knew how to create a loop in a few languages, however testing was only mentioned at the end, and then I couldn’t get a full flavor for it. None of the other quality-focused practices were even mentioned.
I don’t know how it is in other countries, but I hear this same experience regularly from developers I know.
I’m running over my 5 minute read time here so I’ll cut to the chase.
Keep Growing Up
We need to bring these practices back to development on a massive scale. I believe that this can be done through proper, grass root level education. That education is beginning with people like Corey Haines and Gustin, and the principles are being embodied in the Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship.
This is part of the maturing of our rapidly growing and evolving industry, and one I hope that I can help to spread.
We need this to be seen as professionals and not as commodities, to gain better footing in the business world.
At a SXSW panel yesterday titled Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One, the speakers took us through an exercise to find out if we were generalists or specialists. The generalist side of me won by one point, with the final ratio being 5:4 generalist to specialist. This panel was one I wanted to [...]
I got into the registration line at SXSW around 4:30 PM. It had opened at 3 PM, and I was warned that I might want to stay away for a bit as it was a bit of a madhouse. Much like at Disney, the line went pretty far back, and once you got into the [...]
Robert Dempsey talks with Richard Sheridan, the CEO of Menlo Innovations, about his experience developing Agile teams, and building Menlo Innovations from the ground up to be an Agile organization. If you would like to have your company featured in the Agile Success Series please contact me and let’s talk!
You can find Richard on Twitter, [...]
I’ve got an idea for you. If you try this let me know how it works.
We’ve all seen the pictures of team spaces. Some are open spaces with a single, long desk that everyone sits at. Others are cube farms. The rest are typically some variation.
What I’ve found though is that someone in management determined [...]
Due to travel to SXSW I need to move the Introduction to Kanban webinar to tomorrow at 2 PM EST. I’ll be broadcasting from sunny Austin, TX, and hope to see you there.
If you haven’t signed up for the webinar, subscribe to my newsletter to get the link.
See you tomorrow.
Aside from drinking coffee and traveling with my family, I have two passions in life – Agile, and Internet marketing.
My passion for Agile comes from my desire to help companies and teams find a better and more effective way of working, a way that is based on trust, collaboration, and enablement.
My passion for Internet marketing comes [...]
The schedule for the Agile Central Europe conference, being help April 8-9 in Krakow, Poland, has been announced,
The conference has two packed tracks plus an open space that lasts the duration. Talks range from agile retrospectives to kanban to management.
The lineup of speakers is fantastic, and I’m not just saying that because I am one. [...]
