Tag Archives: Culture

Offshore Development Anti-Patterns

Cost of connection, Group intercommunication formula: n(n − 1) / 2

“The Mythical Man Month” – Fred Brooks, 1975

Like most people I am currently working from home. The Corona pandemic is upon us and everything has changed. When we emerge from these hard times, we will see a new normal. I hope this new normal can also be better.

Because of the situation, our development teams are now 100% distributed, an unwanted but interesting experiment to study. Suddenly we are more equal, there’s no onsite and offshore, everyone is alone.

This post is about offshore development, or rather some learnings and “don’ts” from my own experience from the past seven years, through different setups. Continue reading →

From Push to Pull, Lesson One: Enterprise Communication

One of my first observations at my new job was that I had come to a very meeting- and mail-intense workplace. After one day my calendar was fully booked and my inbox flooded. I realised my big plans for fast changes would soon be shattered, since I would be so busy running to important meetings and reading even more important emails.

Having coworkers enthusiastically filling each other’s calendars and inboxes creates a destructive Push culture. These basic actions form whether someone else controls your time (Push) or you decide yourself how to make the best of it (Pull). Continue reading →

Applied Kanban Values: Transforming the PMO, part 2

Respect: put away the RACI

Have you ever produced a RACI document? Together with many other steering documents it forms a pillar for the PMO, and defines who is responsible, accountable, contributing or only informed for each and every step in a process. In a RACI meeting you would typically discuss whether the product owner should contribute in the UX work for his/her story or only be informed. Or maybe the PO is actually accountable even though the UX expert is obviously responsible?

Kanban should be like water, making its way through cracks.

Continue reading →