Thomas Koeppen Blog

I found a nice description from http://www.agileadvice.com/ : “A leader is a person who assists a group of people become a self-organizing, self-managing and self-sustaining team so that he/she no longer has to be a leader for that group.” This is an interesting definition in contrast to the wikipedia one: House defines “leadership” organizationally and [...]

Scott Ambler’s latest DDJ article covers a topic that is important for us: Pitching Agile to Senior Management – This inability to articulate to senior management why they should adopt agile techniques is ironic considering our focus on communication. Ambler’s experience is that management is often very willing to become more agile if you’re able [...]

There are many different processes that fit under the Agile umbrella and almost every company implements them differently. The idealistic phase is over, and teams are quite practical in the ways in which they adopt and adapt Agile processes. But many are overwhelmed by the tasks of selecting specific practices, fitting them with legacy processes, [...]

Scott Amler’s article “Scaling Agile Development Via Architecture” in the November 2006 issue of Agile Journal summarizes strategies for Agile teams regarding architecture, and argues that an effective approach to architecture is an important aspect of scaling agile software development. 1. Focus on collaboration over documentation. “Agile architects” are … not simply people who document [...]

Managing is about systems and processes and resources; leading is about achievement and vision. — Peter McDougall You can’t control what you can’t measure. -Tom DeMarco Software is a thought process. To patent it is comparable to patenting induction or deduction. —Tom DeMarco I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn [...]

1. Keep business experts away, far away, from integrators and developers. If the people building the solution don’t talk with the people who need the solution, then the project will fail every time. Admittedly, driving a wedge between creators and users is a lot easier when you’re a manager, but even average workers can keep [...]