During the last week, I attended a course on Kanban (Jedi level, mind you) at Crisp in Stockholm. The course was conducted by David Andersson, who is considered a key figure in applying Kanban to the software industry.

If you’re new to Kanban, I highly recommend this article by Henrik Kniberg as a great introduction. Keep an eye on InfoQ for a comprehensive book on the subject, which includes some excellent case studies.

The course was fantastic and provided a deeper understanding of Lean thinking. Kanban offers simple but powerful tools: visualization (put it up on the wall!), prioritizing value-adding activities, minimizing waste, and performing root-cause analysis.

Kanban itself is straightforward to understand, but mastering it is like any game—simple rules, but a lifetime to perfect.

I also felt a need to delve into the underlying Lean principles that are foundational to both...

OK – this has been quite a journey, and I’m not completely satisfied with the solution yet, but it works. Along the way, I’ve had to delete all my contacts and calendar items on my phone about five times… Brrr – equally scary each time.

Here’s the problem: As a consultant, I work for customers who have their own Exchange Servers (or similar). When I start at a customer, I’m given an account, for example, marcus.hammarberg@anycustomer.se. My coworkers at AnyCustomer start sending me emails and making appointments in my AnyCustomer calendar.

I also work for Avega, which provides me with an email address and calendar.

Lastly, I have a private Gmail account for personal stuff.

So, I have three synchronization issues: mail, contacts, and calendar items. Here’s how I’m handling them right now. I hope a better solution will present itself later.

Contacts

I keep all my...

Last Thursday was an exciting day. After a not-so-well-planned post about a previous article, we finally had the chance to host a visit from one of the giants of IT, Ivar Jacobson.

I’ve made a brief recap of his visit here (in Swedish). What stood out for me was not just the wealth of experience he brought, but also his enduring enthusiasm for the field.

I was particularly struck by his perspective on the IT industry as a fashion industry, constantly chasing trends. Ivar now emphasizes focusing on the practices used within various processes, rather than the processes themselves, as a way to provide great support for organizations.

One of his statements made me laugh: “We really have gone crazy with the documentation” (my translation). This from the father of RUP, a methodology that many have turned into a documentation-heavy behemoth…

It was truly an honor...

I recently discovered a great tool for creating, editing, and presenting slideshows online: 280slides.com. It’s a free platform that offers a lot of functionality.

With 280 Slides, you can:

• Create and edit presentations directly in your browser
• Upload presentations in PowerPoint format
• Save your presentations “in the cloud”
• Download presentations in several formats, including PPT(X) and PDF

I find it to be a really useful tool!

By the way, this is my 600th post. It’s been a fantastic journey, and I have no plans to stop anytime soon. I never imagined when I started here that I’d reach this milestone.

Although some time has passed since the vacation, I realized that I haven’t posted photos from it. Here is a short summary of what we did and where we went during those lovely summer months. Not too far away…

Albert enjoying himself on the seashore - he stayed here most days…

Here we are on our way into the water. Again.

Elin and I went to Liverpool for a short holiday without Albert. Together with Kalle and Fanny, here is a picture from the shores of the Irish Sea.

Albert in Västra Bodarna where his cousin Hilda lives. She wasn’t born yet, but she is now.

And...