REPOST FROM CODEBETTER I noticed that CodeBetter is slowing down. Maybe dying. I’m preserving my post from there, here to my site. This particular post makes me very proud to repost here, since it’s apparently one of the first posts ever written on mob programming, not by Woody Zuill - the father of the concept. Original post One of the things that fascinates me with our industry is that you can learn new stuff, things that throw your current ideas on end and even provokes you – every day. For my first blog post here I thought I share such a concept that have surfaced to my mind the last couple of months. Being offered to blog for CodeBetter was nothing I expected and I’m deeply humbled, a bit proud and somewhat nervous. So I thought the best way of handle those feelings was to just write about something that...

Up to now I have sadly not have time to look into Chocolatey. I know what it is but I haven’t played with it. As the time grew closer to set up a new development machine I thought I’d give it a run Chocolatey a run for it’s money. Could my entire development environment be installed using a script? That is - from a bare-bones Windows installation could I run a script and get everything I needed in place. This was a real challenge since I don’t know (nor want to learn) any powershell and consider myself to be a newbie Chocolatey user. This post describes my journey. Getting a virtual windows installation in place I use OS X and VirtualBox to run virtual instances of windows. Creating a virtual image is simple enough in VirtualBox and then you can attach an .iso-file with the Windows installation. The Windows 8.1 installation was...

In Sweden there’s a radio show on each summer, everyday. It has the creative name “Summer”. It has been playing every summer since the 50-ies and is a Swedish institution. The concept is each: invite Swedes that have done interesting stuff last year or so and let them talk about their life during 1,5 hours, mixed with music of their choice. This year I've only caught a few of them, and the one I'll tell you about now I only heard 5 minutes of. The program was hosted by the former manager and coach of the Swedish National team in soccer - Lars Lagerbäck. He has had a great career as a coach but always been very shy and in the background, so you don't know much about his leadership style. Obviously he did something good since the team has done well during the last years. It was really just...

During the summer I was handed a delicate task for the book: “… and also, if you could hand us all the images in the book, thank you very much. Oh yeah, if you could name them CH01_01.png, CH01_02.png etc it would be great.” Yes I felt a bit like: Since Kanban In Action now have 13 chapters in different .doc-files I immediately realized two things: - Marcus - your are stupid for not tracking these images somewhere - This is to big to do manually This post describes how I did. It took me about 2 hours all together. ### Export all files in a Word document The chapters are written in .doc formats (for some reason), but I seem to recall that the newer format .docx in reality is just a zip-file. Maybe, just maybe, that could help me. 1. I "Save as..."'ed the file to .docx. 2....

I ran across a great post by Dan Kindeborg that thought me a lot of about effect mapping (prequel to Impact mapping). “Sadly” it was in Swedish and I got to keep the material to myself… Or well no - that’s not how I roll. So asked Dan for permission to translate the original post here on my blog. He was totally fine with that so here it is. When you read stuff about UX and design below it’s Dan’s word. Don’t worry - i still know nothing about that. But I learned a lot by reading this I hope you do too. So, from the next paragraph when you read “I think” it’s actually Dan thinking. Just so you know. Over to Dan. Lean UX with effect map An IT-project is often started with an idea about how business impact can be created. Someone has invented a new way to make...

I was asked to help a client to facilitate a Impact Mapping workshop. An initial map had already been created as a first try and we talked about around it to get a feel for where the discussion would head. The main goal (refered to as the WHY on an impact map) was well-established and understood in the organization. Which was a big “phew” for me, since that is a hard case to crack in a single workshop, I reckon  I foresee lengthy discussions with political undertones, at least if it’s keept on a company-wide-level. But in this case the goal was set, let’s say that it was “Get 100 000 active users by 2014”. On the next level, WHO, the proposed map and reasoning confused me a bit. And I didn’t have an answers to explain why. On the next level the map showed the different teams in the organization....

Well the title really says it all, but there’s big changes coming for me and my family this autumn. We’re moving to Bandung, Indonesia to work at a hospital for the Salvation Army there. That statement may cause some questions to arise in your head. Let me see if I can foresee them? Why? There’s three big answers to that question and they come in chronological order. On my first date with Elin (8 years ago now, my wife since 6 years) she told me that she wanted to work abroad. In a “developing country”. That’s her life long dream and the reason she’s decided to become a nurse in the first place. Now the opportunity has come to fulfill that dream - and I get to be part of it! Secondly: I have the Salvation Army to thank for so many things. Things that I use in my everyday life at work and other...

I was at the hairdresser yesterday. I’m not very particular about my hair but it was starting to look a bit like this. When I want it to be more like this guy to the left. The conversations at most hair dressers in Sweden is not very interested, mostly due to the fact that I’m not interested in hair. Particularly mine. So while I was seated in the chair thoughts from some discussions on prioritization and flow for a team at a client. Low WIP and flow are concepts that are well understood and often implemented as well at this particular client but the implications of such a strategy was interesting. And, oddly enough, I saw some great strategies implemented at my hair dresser. I sat down with some guys and we talked about Mob Programming, as they had read my blog post on the topic. Specifically we talked about the great...

I’m back from AgileSverige - the premier agile conference in Sweden (IMHO) and this year was no exception. Or rather it was - it was exceptionally great from where I sat. One of the talks that really got me thinking was about Mobprogramming by Tobbe Andeberg and Ville Svärd. Not the technique itself but rather the implications of such a team… Mobprogramming is easy to do; put your entire team in a room. Give them a single keyboard. Work together to solve the problem at hand. Then take the next. Then the next. And so on. It’s like pair programming but for an entire team. I’m not sure that a team would benefit by doing mobprogramming all the time but the concept got me thinking, thanks to the great presentation by Tobbe and Ville. What if… In this post I’ll share some ideas and thoughts that sprung from that presentation. No -...

In recent years the Lean Startup movement has really taken off. For a great reason as well. It’s a really appealing and excellent described framework for how to get validated learning of your startup idea fast.  For me as a Lean-dude it all sounds very nice and fits nicely into my current understanding and beliefs. But as always ideas like the ones presented in Lean Startup will be stolen, then tweaked “a bit” and then finally declared unsuitable for the things that it didn’t was intended to solve in the first place. I’ve seen it again and again; agile, scrum, specification by example is just a couple of examples that comes out top of mind. In this post I’ll share some things that I’ve been thinking about around this recently. If I’m wrong about these things I look forward to your comments and further education on the topic. MVP The thing from Lean startup that many...