We’ve just got our visas for entering Indonesia! Lovely!

But the process has been very long, trying and almost took the best out of us. It got me thinking about a big, and characterizing difference between the agile and the non-agile approach (let’s call I waterfall for now, shall we?).

The process we went through for our visa application resembles the way many companies deliver software, sadly. Could there be another way?

When we applied for the Visas we were told that it should take about 2 months to get them. We acted accordingly and started to quit jobs, take kids out of school, end the lease for our apartment and a lot of other things - just to match that prediction.

But we got a couple of;

• “it will probably take 2 weeks more”
• “no news - probably a week or two more”
• “well… haven’t heard anything yet...

As most of you probably know I’m on my way to leave the country and do other type of work for a while. It’s been a bumpy ride and we’re actually still waiting for the work permits before we can leave. Any day now…

The last couple of weeks I’ve ended most of my commitments and different consultant contracts with my customers, but I don’t have anything else to do… so I thought I’ll make something up. Two things popped into my head:

• last year when I did some free presentations during a period between employments
• and the fact that I don’t want to come back in 3 years and just continue with the same material

From IMDB

People who read this blog knows that I love constraints, and people that know me knows that I’m a Seinfeld buff. He...

Often when I try to explain Lean and Agile there’s a couple of things that I fail to communicate clearly. Quite shortly these things can be summed up with these two short answers:

• Yes - I’m talking about changing the way we work
• No - I’m not talking about working faster (this post)

From http://www.acs.psu.edu/drussell/Asterix/

This post is about me failing to communicate that I we shouldn’t be going faster, work quicker, beating the drum on the galley with a higher frequency. No - there’s something else.

Much of the things I try to help teams and individuals when I introduce them to lean and agile has to do with moving faster:

• faster, smoother flow
• shorter iterations
• faster feedback loops
• etc.

From http://loubega33.wordpress.com/

After stating a few of those I often feel a bit...

I’ve done numerous presentations on Lean and Agile, and there are a couple of things that I often feel I don’t succeed in implanting in people’s minds. I thought I’d write them down so that I can direct people back here, and also remind myself when I forget.

Quite shortly, these things can be summed up with these two short answers:

• Yes - I’m talking about changing the way we work (this post)
• No - I’m not talking about working faster

This post is about changing.

When I introduce people to Lean, I often play a little game with them. Pass the pennies or The Dot Game are my two current favorites.

We might end up with a result table like the one to the right. This is a result of running Pass the pennies. Each column represents the number of coins to pass...

Over and over again I’ve seen the main gain from using specification by example emerge in the conversations you have around the specifications. I’ve even been known to tell people to just make sure to do the specifications on a whiteboard, take a photo of it and then don’t use anymore of the practices. Just doing that will help an awful lot - I promise.

But lately I’ve come across a situation that have got me to think about the other end and what happens when we don’t automate our scenarios. It’s a continuity thing and it doesn’t hang together.

If you read my blog before you know I’m a sucker for stories and let me illustrate my point with two stories.

Only workshop-ing

The first story comes from a team at Spotify, that moved faster than any other I’ve seen. We’re talking...

I had the great pleasure to do my military service in the Swedish Army Band, that at the time (1992) was made up of conscripts. Not only did I get to wear stuff like the picture to the left and play in an awesomely great band, but also did we travel Europe and played, among other places the Casino in Monaco. It was a awesome year in many regards and I tied friendship-knots with a lot of people that still get to meet today.

On our last day in the band there were a lot of tears and saying farewell to friends and officers that had taken care of us. Through all the emotions that day I still remember one thing that an officer said as his part of his farewell speech:

Fellas - don’t fear mistakes. By all means, fail. But try to steer away from irreversible mistakes.

...

REPOST FROM CODEBETTER

I noticed that CodeBetter is slowing down. Maybe dying. I’m preserving my post from there, here to my site.

Original post

“What?! Don’t everyone know about this?”

There are some tools and practices that I use on a regular basis that have grown so familiar and accustom to me that I’m almost embarrassed to talk about them. Because I thought that everyone one did it this way. Not seldom it’s just like that too – it’s something that everyone knows and I end up being laughed at. I can take that, since the one person that didn’t hear about it before might have got something new that could help him. And, not to mention, I often end up learning myself in the process.

So… if you know about this practice (that I don’t know the name for, I call it Weighted...

One of the things that I really love with my job is that you meet a lot of excellent people at the different clients. Some of these people are seldom heard from since they are drowned in the output of those extrovert, space-demanding people that inhabits the blog-o-sphere and twitter. Yes, the people like me.

Right now I’m at Tradera and meet a lot of those awesome, cloaked gems of knowledge, people everyday. One of them is called Andreas Johansson (no twitter, no blog - see what I mean) and every time I get to sit down and discuss with him I learn stuff and gain insights.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about commitment, and he said something profound:

You cannot demand commitment. It’s something that emerges in working teams.

 My translation, sorry Andreas if I didn’t made it justice.

Commitment...

I’m a big proponent of trying to live with and take embrace of uncertainty when you can. I’ve been saying “It’s just how things are - try to cope with it instead of fighting it”. Inspired by Dan North and his excellent talk: Embracing Uncertainty.

But lately I’ve been on the other side… where I was craving more certainty. As often before I found myself screaming for things that’s been asked of me before. “Give me a status! Give me a plan!” I heard myself begging.

I realized two things: it’s hard living with uncertainty and the smallest status (however uncertain) is better than no certainty at all.

No status = all statuses

As you might or might not known I’m in the process of moving to Indonesia. Right now we are waiting for the work permits and subsequently the visas to get into Indonesia....

I have a confession to make: I’m a sucker for musicals. Especially those old ones with those jolly tunes. One of my all-time favorites is: My fair lady. Since I like these old musicals it happens from time to time that I find myself singing the tunes. Out loud. The other day it happened again, but this time it was actually appropriate. In fact; the song I was humming told me something about visualization.

Here’s the scene: Eliza Dolittle have is fed being taught how to speak properly. And leaves the professor that tries to teach her. She leaves the house only to find a young man (Freddy) that loves her madly. He tries to tell her so. In oh so many long, beautiful and complicated words. So Eliza sings the following song:

The lyrics is brutal and to the point:

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of...