The end of an era
Today has been marked in my calendar for a long time. Today is the end of an era. Today is the last day of Bill Gates at Microsoft. We all have an opinion on Microsoft and their products and...
View ArticleForm and Function
“If you analyze the function of an object, its form often becomes obvious,” – Ferdinand Porsche. Mister Porsche was probably not thinking about software development or business processes as we know...
View ArticleThe hotmail CV tax
Whenever I have a (technical) person applying and they have a hotmail address as their preferred means of contact I shiver ever so slightly. Even if the actual mailbox is very sensible like...
View ArticleOn motivation of teams
One of the things I enjoy most in my professional life is the challenge that comes with building and guiding a team. In this post I’d like to offer an opinion on 3 factors that have a tremendous effect...
View ArticleThe Prince-iples of Agile
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about traditional project management methods. In part to understand why/where they fell short for software and what their use might be. Some elements in the agile...
View ArticleA note on company culture
just read through the slidedeck netflix put up on slideshare…can I go apply now?
View ArticleAre you still having fun?
Ask any of the guys who report to me…it’s the question I probably ask most consistently in most 1on1. Here’s why I care so much about it: fun = happy. And to give you 3 more reasons Per week 40 hours...
View ArticleA quick response to Tim Cook and Steve Ballmer
I just read this article: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/why-tim-cook-is-like-steve-ballmer/ For those of you who can’t be bothered clicking the link and reading through it, here’s the gist:...
View ArticleI’m done with scrum
It took some time, but I’m done with scrum. In fact I’m done with pretending in general, but that’s a different matter. As Joost said: ”it takes a lot of time to see you need less to become more.” I’ve...
View ArticleReading list
Because Stijn asked me a long time ago… A selection of books I’ve read and recommend to others. I have left out most of the Agile and software/technology related books on purpose. I think most of the...
View ArticleWhy we build software
Most project management methods have some definition of “business value”, traditionally it’s documented in a business case, Kanban advocates cost of delay, Scrum defines a business value for stories…...
View ArticleThe myth of the self organizing team
The software industry is rife with self organizing teams these days, or at least with teams that (cl)aim to be that. Yet, in management circles it also seems those teams are fairly often considered as...
View ArticleUnderstanding Product Tradeoffs through Modelling
In the next few weeks I’ll be working through a modelling exercise to illustrate how this technique can help make product decisions/tradeoffs. In the first installment the goal is taking it from square...
View ArticleUnderstanding Product Tradeoffs through Modelling – Step 2
In the previous post we built a static P/L for a product, modelled out to a five year period. The key to understanding that model is in moving away from what I would call “first level” numbers and move...
View ArticleThe reading list – Next Gen Devops
In August last year I posted a list of books that I would consider essential reading material. I still stand behind that list, but there is one book that deserves to be added to it. The one book… It...
View ArticleUnderstanding Product Tradeoffs through Modelling – Step 3
This is the last post in this series on modelling product revenues. We started with building a static profit&loss statement in step 1. In step 2 we introduced variability and a way to summarise the...
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