The Time to Change is Now

Recent events have made it clear that the time remaining to save our planet is limited. Somewhat horrifically, a recent Sky Poll discovered that less than half of the UK population are willing to make any of the significant changes to their lifestyles that are needed in order to make a small movement towards carbon neutrality.

Individuals become trapped within the social models and ways of seeing the world that they are used to - it's simple human nature and fundamental to how we learn. If we want to make significant changes to people's lifestyles we must first enable these changes by removing the norms that their rejection to change is based upon.

Remote working support for You

I am very proud to announce that, as of April this year we have now added another service to our offering - supporting you in implementing remote working for your teams.

The new Remote Control service is now live and, through this, we help to be able to impart the knowledge that we've built up over many years working with / across distributed teams to help other organisations make the transition from expensive, static, office based organisations to dynamic and flexible efficient organisations with remote staff by making use of the best of modern tools.

We hope to continue to evolve the service over the year, adding quick start packs and tech support to help get you set up for remote working as quickly as possible.

The anti-agility of dogma (or why Agile is a Science and not a Faith)

The English Oxford Dictionary defines Dogma as...

A principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true : 'the dogmas of faith'

To apply this to the agile world we only have to look at the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto. These principles are guidelines for good practice. If Agile, in it's purest form, was a faith then these principles would be akin to Christianity's ten commandments.

The principles are based on experience and growth from many different business types using many different techniques over an extensive period of time. In this Agile is less like a faith and more like a science. It is in the latter that true agility can be found, not in the former.

Climate Change Mitigation - Remote Working

The concept of remote working is far from a new one. I first remember the early rumblings of it just after the turn of the millennium when internet access had started to become fairly ubiquitous and, while still slow, technologies were starting to evolve to speed up the internet access that the average person could benefit from.

Fast forward 15 or so years and things have changed, but not to anywhere near the extent that was expected. A swift review of the numerous remote working job websites quickly reveals a very US centric trend which, certainly the UK, lags far behind in.

What is a Pragmatic Agilist?

PRAGMATIC: Dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations: "a pragmatic approach to politics"

AGILE: Relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans: Contrasted with waterfall: "agile methods replace high-level design with frequent redesign"

(quotes above courtesy of Oxford Dictionaries - © Oxford University Press)

AGILIST: A proponent of, or someone who actively practices, Agile (see above) (not a dictionary word).

Meet the real Spike

Last month I wrote about the benefits of using a Spike. This time I’m writing about a different Spike – he’s my Scrum toy and has worked with me at various companies in and around Bristol over the years. Many people have grown to love Spike and I just wanted to advocate the benefit of using a Scrum toy – it’s a great way to add fun to your meetings, you need a toy that is happy to be thrown around to give everyone a chance to speak when they catch him. It might seem silly, and it is a little, but Spike really has brought a smile to many of my colleagues. He’s currently having a short rest before starting a new project next week. If you’d like to work with Spike do get in touch! You can follow him here. 

The Value of a Spike

In software development planning practices, a Spike is a time box used to investigate something. This most usually occurs when, while begining to estimate items on the backlog, items are found that contain too many unknowns to estimate. The Spike is created as a piece of work, with an agreed time (or story points value) associated to it which will be spent investigating the problem. The output of the spike will be, in this scenario, a valid estimate for the other piece of work as an approach can then be verified.

Today I was able to qualify the value of this in real money.

Goodbye Stephen

We all have heroes. On 21st April 2016, the hero of the creative part of me passed away when Prince died in his home. This morning, 1th March 2018, I lost my other hero.