First the name, I’m about software and software projects live and die by the decisions we choose to make and the decisions we choose not to make. Therefore this site is focused on decision making by managers, leaders and most importantly teams as they navigate the murky waters of building software that matters.
At the heart of that are three inter-related ideas:
Requirements
Defining requirements is too often thought of as a one-time, all-upfront activity, which is the primary reason requirements related issues are behind most failed software projects. Defining requirements is actually a discovery process that should continue throughout the initial development project and beyond. If we allow ourselves to, we will constantly learn more about what software consumers need and how we can best satisfy those needs. A key to success is working in ways that enhance our ability to incorporate that learning.
Focus
Many corporate environments exhibit significant attention deficits that inhibit actual progress toward critical business initiatives. As a result software projects often drift aimlessly while teams bounce back and forward between the urgent issues of the day, rather than achieving the defined objectives of the project. Leadership is required to foster a culture of team-commitment to the predictable delivery focused on true business value.
Relationships
Software development and integration projects done in isolation can only fail. Software development is a collaborative effort that brings together diverse groups of people and ideas to achieve a common destiny. Building, growing, and nurturing trust relationships is essential in creating real business value through the use of technology.
First Robbie’s Blog is a growing collection of my thoughts, musings, and restless reactions to those things I encounter in my work and attempt to (hopefully) improve. Next, Downloads is a collection of presentations and articles that capture some of those musings in a more formal way. The Resources page is a collection of sources for more information from the agile community at large that I have found inspiring, enlightening or otherwise useful in contemplating how I can help improve people, teams and processes.
Hopefully all of this reflects three core beliefs and a flavor of three things that will always remain hard.
The beliefs:
- Servant Leadership – leaders are there to serve the team; not the other way around
- Collaboration – none of us is smarter than all of us
- True agile teams can do anything
What’s hard:
- about leadership – knowing when to get out of the way
- about management – knowing when leadership is required
- about agile – moving beyond the practices
Spent a very fruitful two days in San Antonio guiding my client's pilot agile team through the end of sprint ceremonies for thier first sprint. The team did great; set a good sprint goal, planned the work out, determined early in the sprint the needed to make some adjustments, showed working software to the product owner mid-way through, and met their first sprint goal. Along the way they learned somethings and had a bit of fun. They are off to a good start.
Enjoyed Agile Development Practices 2009 in Orlando very much even though the weather was mostly awful. Attended some good sessions and caught with some friends. The APLN Leadership Summit was a great success drawing our largest crowd. Bryan Campbell and I were very pleased with the response to our presentation Maturing Your Organization's Agile Adoption, and the presentation materials are available here.
Just finished a successful outing at Houston Techfest 2009 with Bryan Campbell. Houston Tech*Fest is quickly developing into a premier event for the Houston technology community. Our presentations are now available here.
APLN Houston celebrated is first birthday last week. It was a great milestone marking the end of a very busy and exciting year all made possible by the hard work of many people including my friends and colleagues Ron Whitebread, Alan Bustamante, Shravan Arra and Barbara Brown.
was a great conference that I would highly recommend. Unfortunately I have not had time to write up a summary report, but that's still on my to do list.
PMI Houston was kind enough to publish my "Advanced Citizenship" Article in their monthly newsletter this month: PMIH Newsletter - August 2009
I have recently started an informal affiliation with Corpus Optima and am initially developing an agile principles workshop as a part of the Super Project Bootcamp series being offered in September and again in January.
And long with my colleagues and friends Ron Whitebread, Alan Bustamante and Shravan Arra, I am continuing to provide leadership for the Houston Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN) chapter.
In August I was elected to serve as a Vice President on the national board of directors of APLN and am looking forward to working with some new colleagues to help APLN evolve.