In many workplaces, deadlines are set arbitrarily – plucked from thin air or driven by external pressures rather than careful consideration of the resources and scope. While the intention might be to create urgency, arbitrary deadlines can lead to rushed work, technical debt, and burnout. At the heart of the issue is a lack of […]
Little’s law was first published in 1954. It wasn’t proven true until 1961 and the proof was simplified in 1972. This just about pre-dates iterative development methods and certainly pre-dates the Agile manifesto (2001). It’s from the same period as Toyota’s production system which gave us several great concepts (thank you Mr Ohno). Unlike these […]
When working towards an objective or goal there are often some measurements taken to try to indicate progress. These indicator measurements (shortened to just metrics) will be either leading or lagging indicators and it’s important to understand the difference. Key Performance Indicators Indicators are statistical values to measure the current situation as well as attempting to […]
If you don’t know what the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) are then where have you been hiding. It’s responsible for the piles of email most people recently received about updated privacy policies and consent requests. Whatever you think of GDPR, it’s now law across the European Union (EU). If you are processing personal data […]
I’ve often used three phrases to describe the state of advancement of some piece of technology and recently realised that while two are well known the third is not. Most people have heard of “Cutting Edge” and “Bleeding Edge” but rarely “Beyond the Edge”. Here are my definitions of these terms, yours may differ but […]
There are several approaches to software development that require the estimation of work items, many of these approaches call work items, stories or tasks. To keep this post applicable to various approaches I’ll simply refer to work items. There are many approaches and guides about how to do estimating, the process, the range of values […]
