Does Radical Collocation Help a Team Succeed?

In this research paper published recently from the University of Michigan, they evaluated 6 teams in a Fortune 50 automobile company to study the impacts of radical collocation. They define radical collocation as "putting an entire project team in one room for the duration of the project". Results Simply put, the results were very positive - productivity doubled over previous projects; team, sponsor and end user satisfaction were high, and the team members were more positive about their experience going out than when it first began. Sounds like a trifecta!

"In simple terms, the pilot teams produced double the number of function points per staff month from the previous baseline for the company. The time to market (cycle time) dropped to almost 1/3 as compared to the company baseline, and even lower than that produced by the industry as a whole. Both these results are statistically significant at p<.001 using z scores against the single baseline number."

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Has Agile Crossed the Chasm?

As we come upon the 5th year anniversary of the Agile Manifesto, there are a number in our community looking at what progress we have made, where we are today, and the direction we are headed. In essense, we are asking ourselves, "Have we crossed the chasm?" - according to the well known book Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore.

Diana Larsen published a well-written article on Agile Alliance Survey: Are We There Yet? In this article, she surfaces some evidence that we have made some great progress, and by some people's opionion have Crossed the Chasm.

In another survey, VersionOne has recently published their results from their "The State of Agile Development" Survey with some results that also parallel those discussed by Diana Larsen.

Has Agile Crossed the Chasm?

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Developing an Agile Attitude

I don’t often just point to another article and not provide my own opinion on top of it, but Doug DeCarlo has the right approach for agile project managers in his article "Get It Right the Last Time: Developing an Agile ...

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Is Agile Paying off for BMC?

BMC Software, a provider of enterprise management solutions and a $1.5B company has made quite a splash recently. No that wasn't the dead splash falling in the water, but rather the splash of water in your face if you are CA or HP. Watch Out!

BMC has been Honored for Innovation in Software Development, Partner Activities, Customer Satisfaction and Identity Management...

"BMC's Infrastructure and Application Management development team was selected as winner of a 2006 Innovator Award by Application Development Trends (ADT) for the development of BMC Performance Manager using the Scrum methodology."

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Top 10 Reasons for Project Success

In a recent interview with Jim Johnson from the Standish Group, InfoQ had the opportunity to speak with the creator of The CHAOS Chronicles: representing 12 years of independent commercial research on project performance of over 50,000 completed IT projects.

While much of this report discusses the process that the Standish Group uses to compile their data, there is a very good discussion about the role that agile methods play in project success. In fact, they list the Top 10 Reasons for Project Success based on their research. Given the depth of their research, you may want to take heed to this list. While less humorous than David Letterman's Top Ten Lists, it does provide quite a punch (don't forget to finish reading this blog post after LOL on Letterman's :o).

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Elusive Enterprise Agility

Michael Cote' posted an interesting discussion about the difficulty in scaling agile to the enterprise in "Dysfunctional Agile, Agile-in-the-Large".

In his discussion, Cote' indicates that agile has been solved for the team, but is still an open question when applied in the large. I would argue that this is true for any process, not just agile. By definition, a process simply describes the procedures by which software (in this case) is created. By changing process, you are simply changing the behaviors (the way things are done) of the system. A process takes inputs, applies methods, and creates outputs. Agile processes include tight feedback loops which help with ill-defined inputs.

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Portrait of an Agile Manufacturer

I often find that people can learn most effectively by comparing, through analogy, a completely different business, technology, market, industry, etc. Here is an excellent example of a food manufacturing company that has embraced the principles of agility to drive a successful business model in their industry.

What have they done?

"The plant is a model of agile manufacturing, capable of producing a million pounds of food each month. Operations are governed by a 183-step commercialization process that lays out everything from feasibility testing through postlaunch assessment. A half-million-dollar enterprise resource planning system tracks every step in production--more than 2,000 discrete transactions a day--from the arrival of raw ingredients through shipment of final product. The technology also generates new formulas (that is, recipe cards) every time a batch size changes, which helps workers adjust quickly if a customer suddenly doubles its demand for ginger-carrot soup.

Finished products travel into the packaging room, where employees sort them into boxes, bags, cups, or pouches of various sizes. Workers in lab coats collect samples from some of the unsealed containers and analyze them at diminutive lab tables stocked with microwaves, scales, and test tubes. Using computer readouts they check pH and salt levels--but also more aesthetic qualities. Are the tomatoes crushed enough for this particular customer? Is the fondue too clingy or just clingy enough?"

How did they accomplish this?

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Agile Organizational Visibility

I often discuss with the leaders of organizations and teams about how introducing agile methods are going to open up all sorts of previously hidden issues and deficiencies in their organization. There are a multitude of areas that surface including, but limited to, employee performance, dysfunctional organizational structures, infrastructure, team dynamics, etc.

Often times, as companies are transitioning to an agile approach, the issues surfacing are directed at the new process as the root of the problem when in fact the problems were always there, hidden from normal view. It is like putting on infrared goggles for the first time and seeing another dimension.

A recent testimonial to this came from a posting from Pete Deemer. Here is his account and what he did to redirect the discussion...

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Agile Team Dynamics

In a recent article in CIO Magazine (yes, again - but the short article is not online yet for the reference) on "Deconstructing Team Dynamics", from research at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, they state the following...

"Teams perform better when they share similar ideas about how they get things done...When team members think alike about how to execute a project, they are able to anticipate one another's actions and coordinate their behavior. Thus, they are likely to perform better than teams whose members have different ideas about how a project should proceed."

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Are Architects the Key to Aligning IT to the Business?

I read an interesting article recently in CIO magazine on "How to Align IT with Business Innovation".

Based on a study by Forrester Research - they are suggesting to let the enterprise architects play a key role as coordinators and facilitators for a company's innovation initiatives. The basis is that architects have both the overall view of the business strategy and the overall view of the technology. In other words, they are in the best position to match the business needs to potential solutions.

The study continues with the recommendation to use the enterprise architects as the innovation focal point - building an innovation team to funnel the ideas and then deliver the technologies and IT services necessary to execute those ideas. Their bottom line - IT needs to contribute to innovation equally with business leaders.

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Are Agile Methods Gaining Ground?

So says the survey results presented by VersionOne and the Agile Alliance at the Agile 2006 Conference last week. Here is a link to an article from Application Development Trends on the survey results. Here is a link to the survey itself.

So, what do the results tell us? Based on about 1,000 responses from people in small to large corporations.

  • 75% of the companies surveyed deploy agile processes
  • Ideal team size is 10
  • The internal agile champion is moving up in the organization to VP from team leader two years ago
  • It is being deployed side-by-side with other methodologies in larger organizations
  • A lack of internal resources is the largest barrier to adoption

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Falling toward the Summit

I read a non-agile book recently by Todd Skinner, Beyond the Summit. I highly recommend the book for anyone trying to acheive greater results in business. It is also a quick read with many small lessons to apply immediately.

Thanks to Doug Gregory, an architect at the Spitfire Group, for providing the inspiration to pick up this book. Todd Skinner is a world-renowned rock climber who has found success in being the first to climb some of the most difficult rock faces in the world. I can't do justice to his efforts here, but read the book and you will see for yourself.

The reason it perked my interest is his obvious application of the agile methods. He doesn't know it, but he has applied many of the successful agile practices leading to his success. Because of the new territory he has had to face, he was required to plan for what he could not envison, Todd provides the 4A Formula for successfully overcoming obsticles. In one of them, he states...

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Oracle Fusion half way done?

As I read this article from eweek, Oracle Claims It's Halfway to Producing Fusion Apps (link no longer available), I was beside myself. Before I go on, let me share a few quotes from the article...

Oracle executives insist the company is about halfway to completing the suite even though it only announced it a year ago. In fact, Oracle is ahead of schedule, according to Phillips. "We've got the blueprint. We've got the data model...We'll just extend that with great functionality and strongly established middleware," said Phillips. "The hardest part—the requirements—have been done," said Phillips.

Phillips probably has one thing right - the requirements are the hardest part. That is why they are often the largest culprit in new product failure, because they fail to adequately express the customer's true needs, they frequently change, and they often do not match reality with what can actually be developed.

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Introducing the PairOn

Introducing the PairOn – a chair for only the Extreme of the Extreme Programming pair-programmers! (try that 3 times fast). I realize this might be old news to some of you, but thought that there may be many out there that have ...

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Are you riding a dead horse?

Mary Callahan, a consulting partner, pointed me to the following words of wisdom. In organizations, we often find some of the most unusual behaviors. Possibly we have something to learn from the Dakota Indians...

The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount." However, in modern business, education and government, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:

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KPMG on IT Project Failures

A recent artical from Accountancy Age highlights a recent study by KPMG on IT Project Failures. There are some wonderful statistics quoted such as… “KPMG International’s survey of 600 organisations across 22 countries ...

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Scrum Gathering – Enterprise Adoption

After returning from the Scrum Gathering in Boulder, CO last week, I am encouraged by the activity and the scalability of Scrum as it applies to the enterprise. There were many larger companies represented there discussing their successes and issues with agile adoption with Scrum.

Key Bank, BMC and Capital One were all representing their major shifts toward agile adoption. These companies all have strong agile executives leading the efforts corporate wide and have made major organizational adjustments to facilitate the agile transition. While BMC was leveraging the Rally Software team’s tool and coaches to assist in their transition, Key Bank has retained a close association to Ken Schwaber and has been developing an internal agile coaching and transition team to facilitate their efforts. Capital One is also developing its own agile resource pool and using a number of external consultants to facilitate their transition.

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Where do new ideas come from?

“The world has changed, but our organizations haven’t changed along with it. We can no longer rely on the old solutions and proven products and services that we’ve built our efforts around. Good enough just isn’t cutting it anymore, because everything is good enough. Now, more than ever, you need to be remarkable – remarkably innovative, remarkably driven, and remarkably authentic.”

This is the basis of The Big Moo – a new release by Seth Godin and 33 leading minds on how to be remarkable. There is something for everyone in this remarkable book as all author proceeds are going to charity. Each passage is just a couple pages in length and provides a jolt to your system to get you out of your comfort zone and onto thinking of remarkable new ideas.

As an Agile Executive, we talk about how we innovate through collaborative understanding with our customers, we develop cross-functional teams to help drive our innovative product solutions, and we release our products in increments to get early and frequent feedback from our customers. These are steps in the right direction, but they are not enough. Let me highlight a couple of passages from the book to wet your appetite…

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Is your organization structured for success?

Is your organization structured to deliver successful new product development?

I was recently working with a client that was taking to heart the cross-functional project teams we promote in the agile community. They were asking the best way to structure their project teams – that is, which exact management hierarchy, roles and responsibilities should be put in place? In other words, how extreme did they need to re-organize to be an effective agile team?

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Agile Wisdom

I recently read James Surowiecki’s book “The Wisdom of Crowds”. Yes, I may be a bit behind the crowd on reading this one. Whether you have read it or not – I believe it has some words of wisdom for the Agile Executive, especially on the importance of diversity within a team.

Half-empty or Half-full?

There have been a wide range (positive and negative) of reviews on this book which made it all the more intriguing to read. The “glass is half-empty” people were negative about how the book failed to deliver by not presenting enough scientific analysis and allowing his bias to spin each result in support of his conclusion. The “glass is half-full” people appreciated the book’s collection of a tremendous number of diverse examples of crowd behavior and how he used them to show why crowds are so complex and how then can be used for positive and negative outcomes.

I see the “glass half-full” in this case – I learned from the large volumes of examples of group dynamics and which characteristics enabled them to make wise (or not so wise) decisions. I believe the general diversity of the examples (size, domains, industries, etc.) provide a great opportunity for others to gain insight for their own domain as well.

There were three basic tenants of a group that Surowiecki proposed to make a group wise – diversity, independence and aggregation (of decentralization). I will cover the first two from an Agile Executive perspective…

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Fore!

That’s what we yell when our golf ball goes way off course and is about to hit those on waiting at the adjacent tee box. “Fore!” traces its roots to the 1800’s which was a shortened form of “forecaddie” given to the person who would go ahead and spot each ball as they were hit. What do you yell when your project is off course?

I was talking with a colleague at Rally the other day and she mentioned a golf metaphor to me. I enjoyed it so much, I had to share it.

How do you communicate to executives the basic nature behind agile methods?
Take them golfing! Show them the methods in action!

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Organizational Maintenance

We are diligent about regular car checkups to change the oil, rotate the tires, check the belts, etc. We have a regular, semiannual checkup with our dentist to prevent cavities. However, how often do we maintain our organizations, their structures, roles, relationships and processes? We are missing the organizational maintenance handbook to remind us to regularly check our organizational engines.

I had an AHA! moment as I spent a beautiful weekend in Keystone, CO at a couples retreat (What?). Yes, that’s right, I was at a marriage retreat. Troubles you say? That is the most frequent response from most men I speak with. When I encourage other men to attend I get “Why? Our marriage is just fine.” Exactly! That is why you should go. Spend some time to make sure it stays that way. Regular maintenance – just like your car! If you are “in trouble” its probably too late for a weekend getaway to help. Just as it is too late to “fix” your engine after you have run it on the same oil for 25,000 miles.

I am blessed to have a beautiful and caring wife who has made a commitment to our relationship for routine checkups every few years. We will be celebrating our fifteenth anniversary next summer, and I feel we are more effective parents, employees and community contributors because of our focus on each other and our regular maintenance program.

How does this apply to you?

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Soft is Hard

Tom Peters is often quoted with the words “Soft is Hard, Hard is Soft” – indicating that the difficulties in leadership are the “soft-science” of working with people. Tom’s the man! As an executive (humans with power) coach, I am often confronted with the soft side (human issues) of creating solutions (software with human interfaces) for customers (more humans with issues). Where is the human resources team when you need them?

The benefit (and issues) of agile methods is that they focus you (me) on the human side of application development. Agile recognizes the human elements necessary for creating innovative solutions and leverages them. It breaks down the barriers we are comfortable hiding behind and exposes our a___ (if we are not careful). Get out of the 90’s, we can’t hide behind processes anymore!

Each statement of the Agile Manifesto focuses on the human side of software development over the artifacts, processes and  tools we tend to hide behind. I will highlight just one of them today…

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Keeping up with your Customers?

Are you keeping up with your customers needs?

Is Agile like Publishing?
After presenting some agile principles to a potential client, the CEO related back that agile was like publishing news. His analysis is that newspapers have daily/weekly time-boxes, require an automated build environment (print, cut, fold, sort, collate, bundle, distribute, etc.), work in a dynamic environment (late-breaking stories), deliver complex stories incrementally (war, natural disasters, sports), and empower the developers (allows for creative story development by their reporters). Good observation!

As a metaphor fanatic, his perspective triggered my thoughts about the publishing and application development worlds. Here are some of my thoughts…

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Change This

I was recently introduced to a new non-profit organization Change This. They claim to be creating a new kind of media – through PDF and Blog distribution to challenge the way ideas are created and spread. I was attracted to this site because of my propensity in dealing with change. Adapt or die.

While PDF distribution is not new, and you may even claim that blogging is not new, Change This has pulled together a fairly respectable set to materials from some of the thought leaders in business, culture, politics and technology. Leaders like Tom Peters, Seth Godin and others who have written the books have contributed to their site.

One “manifesto” (as they title their PDF files) that triggered some of my agile executive instincts was from Tom Peters (one of my favorite authors) entitled This I Believe – Tom’s 60 TIBs. In it, Tom lists marketing, strategy and other big ideas in leading business. I know many are tired of the List publishing, but when you don’t have time to read the books, lists from great minds provide opportunities to quickly take stock in your daily activities.

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Book Review: Organizational Patterns

I had finished reading Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development by Coplien and Harrison this summer, but since I keep returning to it through my work, I figured I should write about it.

My initial pre-read perception of this book was that it was going to be just another perspective of agile methods. I was wrong. Coplien and Harrison have dissected development teams to identify the key criteria leading to successful efforts and high-performing teams. Beyond process, this book identifies the organizational structures required to make the processes work.

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High-performance Teams

I spent the better part of today at the Northern Colorado Business Report’s Bixpo event. While this was outside my normal circle of software development conferences, connecting to others in different business sectors and what they are doing to create successful companies is always well worth the time.

One new connection came from a talk provided by Robert Ginnett, a Senior Fellow for the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). Robert is an organizational psychologist and co-author of an undergraduate text book – Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience, 4th Edition, one of the best selling leadership text books. CCL has a campus located in Colorado Springs.
Robert walked through the leadership behaviors required in creating and sustaining high-performing teams. He indicated that there are no traits of successful leaders, only behaviors. Here are the four behaviors he discussed:

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Getting process changes to stick

I hear time and again from company executives that implement changes to their development processes that while there is initial gains, ultimately the business value that drove the change wasn’t realized and the processes slipped back. Engineers call this process churn – “What is our process du jour?”.

Many times processes get put in place with no actual adherence to the process itself. There may be motions of compliance – certain reports produced, visible components showing compliance. But when you get down to where the actual fingers hit the keyboards, there is another process entirely.

The more that process churn happens in an organization, the more likely the engineers have developed a subversive process that will continue through any changes at the top of the organization, even organizational changes! The stories engineers can tell are endless.

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Book Review: Artful Making

I was introduced to Artful Making from one of its authors, Lee Devin, who recently spoke at an executive summit. Devin unleashed my preconceived, engineering notions of how art gets created as well as brought a sound parallel into why agile methods work.

Austin and Devin present a truly innovative approach to help us in the software industry to reconceive our traditionally engineered world. I have a bias toward metaphors and this one really hit home. It not only brings out the soft-science (human) side of developing software, it helps displace the perceptions that artful productions are anything but a disciplined, impeccable process requiring as much, or more, business aptitude than software development to be successful.

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Focus

In discussions on creating shared vision and purpose for organizations, we often hear about the critical importance of companies and teams to have focus. Focus on the vision, goals, and objectives to create positive productivity and deliver the right product on time. A lack of focus allows an organization to wander or spin without realization. Focus is good, but how do you do create and maintain focus in your organization?

Definition: Focus is a close or narrow attention, a condition in which something can be clearly perceived.

Professional athletes talk about focus in many pre and post-game interviews. “We have to have maintain focus on our game plan” in preparation for a upcoming game. Or “We lost our focus” in response to a loss. Some questions arise on focus…

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An Agile Executive…

Agile methods have grown from mostly a bottom-up perspective – individuals and teams becoming agile and educating their peers and leaders on why agile is good and how to do it. The reason for this is that many agile practices focus on the core developer role. They empower this role, and the roles of their peers. Managers and executives who do not understand the characteristics of agile practices may feel threatened, or may not understand how to “lead” their team in this manner. It has the potential for a power struggle between management and the front line workers.

More recently, we are seeing some company executives introducing agile methods top-down. Executives are recognizing agile benefits and want to leverage agile techniques to make their company more customer focused, responsive to customers and improve their customer relationships. However, just as bottom-up methods have the potential of threatening the leaders, a top-down approach has even a greater likelihood of creating a negative reaction among the developers. Anything that attempts to push responsibility, accountability, visibility, exposure and risk to them may cause them to push back. Again, it has the potential to create a struggle between management and the front line workers.

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Is there slack in your organization?

Do you have enough slack in your organization to drive efficiency, productivity and customer responsiveness?

This question seems to be an oxymoron. How can adding slack in the organization add to efficiency? As long as I have been leading engineering organizations, I have been asked to do more with less. Add another product, create a new release variant, support more customers, etc. The mindset of most executives is that our development teams should be running at 110%.

The problem is that if your development teams are running at 110%, then you are in trouble. Imagine running your server farm at 110% CPU utilization. Imaging our highway infrastructure running at 110% capacity. Nothing would get processed. You would never make it to your appointment.

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Prepared for an Emergency?

Are you prepared for an emergency? As I witness the destruction that is upon Louisiana by Hurricane Katrina, I am reminded of how important organizational structures, roles and responsibilities are in handling a dynamic, high velocity, or critical situation.

Emergency response teams are trained to make critical decisions in the field. They must evaluate their situation, communicate with their peers in the field, respond to immediate input and make life and death decisions based on this data and their experience. They receive information updates from a remote command structure, but they are expected to prioritize and respond to the latest development. 

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The Wise Fool


"The Wise Fool asks questions that may be unpopular or that seem politically risky...Often, many people want to ask the same question, but they do not dare." Excerpt from Organizational Patterns for Agile Software Development by James Coplien and Neil Harrison.

As I am reading through this book on organizational patterns of successful agile implementations, I came upon this pattern of the Wise Fool. Just as a backgrounder, the book is a great resource for those more well versed in agile methods, but not recommended for someone trying to learn and apply apply techniques for the first time. It reminds me of walking through a fun house and seeing yourself and your friends in different shapes, sizes, etc.

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False Precision on Agile Development

A recent blog posting by Todd Vernon titled “False Precision on Agile Development” caught the attention of a few agilists, myself included. I am glad Todd had the courage to post his dis-beliefs of agile methods working in ...

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Why I am Agile

I have not always been agile. Throughout my career I have experimented (or been a part of experiments) with other development processes. However, this mix of success and failure has hardened my learning - maximum learning is generated when the probability of failure is 50%, not when your hypotheses are always correct (Reinertsen, Managing the Design Factory).

Over 15 years ago, I began working for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) on a massive project to replace all of a clients mainframe systems with a new client/server system. You know how the story goes. We used some good methods - we engaged our customer with Joint Application Design (JAD) sessions. However, we also used some poor methods - we developed an enterprise data model with over 1200 entities. We spent years analyzing and designing the whole system. Needless to say, nothing was ever delivered from that project.

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Introduction

Welcome to my blog. While I have been a casual observer of many blogs and an avid reader of some, I decided it was time that I share some of my thoughts, learned lessons, words of wisdom and other ramblings back to my community.

My primary community centers around product innovation, software development and the agile community. Some key beliefs that I hold are stated in the Agile Manifesto, Agile Alliance, Agile Project Leadership Network, and the Product Development and Management Association. I consult with companies seeking to improve their productivity and responsiveness to customer needs through agile methods in my company Trail Ridge Consulting.

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