FlowCon

You don't talk about that at work!

Oct 19, 2022 • 5 min


There are things you don’t talk about with your colleagues - even less so with your boss. Mental health issues are certainly a big no-no. When I first started working as an agile tester, I kept my history with mental illness secret. As a result, I couldn’t speak openly about topics that are close to my heart: mental health and self-care. In the Agile World however, we value respect, courage, and openness. How do you reconcile this with these taboos?

Years of Mob Programming - tips and tricks

Oct 19, 2022 • 3 min


Mob programming is when the whole development team works on the same thing, at the same time, in the same space and with one shared computer, screen and keyboard. I’ve been working as a software engineer in a development team where we’ve been mob programming for well over a year, every day, without exceptions. We’ve noticed an enormous boost in productivity and we really feel that we make the most use of the team’s overall brain capacity to solve problems and to ship high quality software to our users. But it’s not always that easy. We’ve learned to master this way of working the hard way, by continuously improving on our processes.

The 5-step Guideline for Managing Items of Different Sizes in Kanban

Oct 19, 2022 • 3 min


Kanban doesn’t work for us because we don’t have items of the same size” - If I had a dollar for every time I heard this statement, I could afford to take my entire family on a month-long, all-inclusive, five-star tropical vacation. And I have a large family!

Turbulence - Thinking Flow Again

Feb 11, 2022 • 8 min


Thinking about flow from some new perspectives. Find opportunities to think about flow. Talk about turbulence: how flow is both good and bad.

Accidental Architects - how HR designs software systems

Feb 11, 2022 • 3 min


Who designs the architecture of your software systems? Conway’s Law suggests that HR may be strongly shaping software architecture by deciding how teams are composed and interrelate. Do you want HR designing your software architecture?

Nine ways to fail at Cloud Native

Feb 10, 2022 • 12 min


Cloud native is the perfect recipe for innovation, adaptability and engineering excellence – when it goes right. When it’s not right, it can be a monster spaghetti, a quality headache, and frustratingly inflexible. Why so negative?

Maturity Mapping or how to tailor capability adoption to your existing culture

Feb 10, 2022 • 17 min


One of the issues with the maturity models we often use to assess teams is they are context free. They don’t take the environment into account, missing the challenges and the specific needs we have in our context. We will explore an alternative: Maturity Mapping. How can Wardley Mapping, Social Practice Theory and Cynefin be applied together to develop situational awareness and build a shared understanding of the practices you use and the unique challenges you face.