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Time for ideas to spread
I saw a post from Kent Beck (author of Extreme programming explained, Tidy first, and lots more) on LinkedIn: Iodine was isolated in 1811. In 1813, iodine deficiency was proposed as the cause of thyroid problems like goiters. In 1954 the last canton in Switzerland (where iodine was especially scarce because glaciers) mandated iodized salt.…
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Futurespectives: learning from failures that haven’t happened yet
This post describes a workshop format I’ve used a few times: help a team think through risks and possible disasters that might affect a piece of work, before the work starts and while there’s still time to do something to avoid all those bad outcomes. What’s a futurespective? Teams often do “retrospectives”: Looking back, reflecting,…
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Minimum Viable Estimation, part 6
This is a writeup from a series of talks and workshops I’ve given on this topic. So far: This post, part 6, is the last in the series. There’s a lot more techniques you could look into for estimation, but for this “what’s the least you can get away with” series, we’ve seen enough. Today,…
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Pathfinding, starring Shakey the robot
I’ve mentioned recently how much I enjoy Advent of Code challenges (no spoilers here, don’t worry). One topic I’ve found fascinating is how to write algorithms that find their way around graphs. There’s a lot of history on how people came up with things, and a wide range of problems they can help with (not…
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Deliver Sessions: “Why did that take so long?”
I’ve been co-organising Deliver Sessions meetup in Manchester for a while, and this year I’ve been writing some notes after each one so I can look back. In November 2023, we were hosted at Michael Page’s office in Spinningfields, where we played a fun interactive game from Mark Kirschstein that had lots of insights into…
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Some things I love about Advent of Code
Advent of Code is an advent calendar of coding puzzles – one puzzle appears every day from 1st to 25th December. Each puzzle is in two parts; solving the first part (by writing some code to work out the right answer, and pasting it into the site) gets you a star, and unlocks the second…
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Deliver Sessions: Probabilistic forecasting
I’ve helped organise Deliver Sessions meetup for a few years, and now I try to write a few notes after each one so I remember all the good topics they cover (like facilitation, outcomes, and working together). In September 2023, we were hosted at Transform’s office in Ancoats, where we heard a true story from Sarah…
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Notes from Lean Agile Scotland 2023
I’m just back from 3 days at Lean Agile Scotland conference based at Edinburgh University. It was a brilliant location, walking distance to lots of beautiful buildings in the city and to the countryside too. While there I ran a workshop on estimation, which carefully incorporated some locally-relevant facts (did you know Edinburgh is home…
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Deliver Sessions: Facilitation skills
I’ve helped organise Deliver Sessions meetup for a few years, and now I try to write a few notes after each one so I remember all the good topics they cover (like lightning talks and thinking about outcomes). The latest one, in June 2023, was back at the BBC’s offices, where we talked about facilitation…