The challenges of IT in small and growing businesses — DevOps, SysOps, SecOps, SRE are all great concepts but what really happens in small businesses? and what are the options and ways forward? Life at the small end What do I mean by small? typically less than 20 people. A business that started as a great idea by the founder got traction and now has…

An accidental effect of best intentions What happens when you mix Agile and Nimble? Well, we had better start by looking at what Agile and Nimble are: Nimble — quick and light Characteristics of Nimble businesses, people, and software development: Make decisions rapidly and act on them (doesn’t mean they are always right but they can…

How to provision today for possible changes tomorrow — Get Out of Jail Card A phrase that originates from a popular board game where a player acquires the right to immediately solve a tricky issue in the future when they accidentally get sent to jail. In the software world, this is also called “leaving space for future expansion”. …

Using your agile skills to get a job — The Great Resignation The pandemic has been responsible for many things, and one of them is causing us to evaluate our life and work. In 2021 as the outlook started to brighten and after months of lock-down people had decided to do something different. Software developers, it seems were a significant part of…

Why skateboard designers shouldn’t build a car — Agile is often explained with the aid of a few cartoon sketches that try to show some sort of evolution. …

The role of complexity and its significance — What is Estimating? Estimation is a way to predict with a level of uncertainty the scale of something. A typical question is “How long will it take to build this new software?” Then follow the standard steps of How much have I got to build At what rate can a person build How…

Measuring agile development can help or hinder if you aren’t aware of the subtleties — I wrote this article to arm developers with some information to ward off evil spirits and managers bearing false gifts, in the form of metrics. …

After all it is just a one liner….. — There is nothing worse than a client asking for an urgent quote for a really small change, especially if it is a visible cosmetic one. The answer often seems surprisingly big but that is because of the iceberg effect with lots of hidden fixed costs that are not understood. …

Some cracking suggestions to start your bookshelf Having built up several shelves in my bookcase with technical books over the years as I was sorting them out I thought it would be interesting to arrange them by job role and task. …