Allen Holub

#NoAccountability

Allen Holub — Mon, 11 Jul 2022 11:05:16 +0000

The notion of accountability—and its lesser cousin, responsibility—often pop up in the context of business, as if both of those ideas are good things. A culture of accountability, we’re told, is essential to running a business. The word “accountable” appears all over the 2020 Scrum Guide. I don’t buy any of it. A culture of…

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Don’t track bugs, fix them

Allen Holub — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 01:25:20 +0000

You do not need a bug tracking system. In fact, a bug tracking system is a symptom of a deeper problem—insufficient focus on quality. In general, I fix bugs the moment they appear—not in a drop-everything sense, but as soon as I can get to it—usually within a few hours, but sometimes in a day…

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Heuristics for Effective Software Development Organizations: A continuously evolving list.*

Allen Holub — Sat, 24 Jul 2021 20:28:42 +0000

Without psychological safety, respect, and trust, none of the following is possible. The way we work, the work we do, and the organizations within which we work are all part of a connected system. You cannot change anything without changing everything. You cannot improve a system by tinkering with the parts. Process exists in service…

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Getting Started with Agility: Essential Reading

Allen Holub — Wed, 09 Jun 2021 12:01:59 +0000

As is the case with many of the people who actually know what they’re talking about, I’ve come to shudder when I hear the word “Agile,” at least until I can figure out whether the person who uttered the word actually knows what they’ve just said. More often than not, they don’t. The word Agile…

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Words

Allen Holub — Sun, 24 Jan 2021 17:42:05 +0000

Words that do not appear in the Agile Manifesto & Principles: Sprint backlog product owner manager PBI (product backlog item) scrum master Sprint review QA team PMO release train product increment stand-up (or Daily Scrum) meeting story point estimate faster time velocity quarterly plan Jira productivity utilization certification standardized process (as a positive) methodology ceremony…

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Building A Clearboard

Allen Holub — Sat, 09 May 2020 00:01:35 +0000

Every time I teach a remote class from my home office, somebody says “oooh, where’d you get that clear whiteboard.” White boards are just ugly, and I wanted something that would essentially disappear into the room, so glass seemed like the best choice. Though I see these in many detective shows on PBS :-), I…

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Adapting #Accelerate to Development

Allen Holub — Wed, 15 Apr 2020 22:05:49 +0000

Accelerate: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organization is one one the best books to hit the shelves in a long time. Nicole Forsgren, and her co-authors, Jez Humble and Gene Kim have done the industry a huge service by providing a data-focused way of analyzing and improving performance that’s based on real research, not…

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Technical Debt

Allen Holub — Fri, 06 Dec 2019 19:05:49 +0000

The notion of technical debt is not well understood, so let’s start there. Agile is all about fast feedback loops—hours or, at most, a couple days. Deliberately lengthening your feedback loop in pursuit of the chimera of perfection destroys your agility. The cost of that delay is a real cost. It usually exceeds development costs…

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Individual Performance Appraisals, Just Say No!

Allen Holub — Sun, 01 Dec 2019 19:19:24 +0000

For some reason, the notion of individual performance reviews comes up a lot. My general feeling is that we should dump them entirely. I’m actually in good company. Almost a third of U.S. companies are dropping individual reviews, including stodgy places like General Electric. (See this HBR article if you can get past their paywall.…

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The Problem With Design

Allen Holub — Sun, 31 Mar 2019 20:23:15 +0000

Somehow, some people have gotten the idea that design is somehow inimical to Agile. That’s not true. It’s always helpful to think about things before you do them. The question is not whether or not you should think in advance, it’s how far in advance should the thinking occur. Hours? Days? Months? The problem with…

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