Establishing closer relationships between the business people and developers is a central principle of agile processes. At the heart of this relationship is the Product Owner role, which carries the responsibility for establishing a bridge between both groups. One of the critical processes managed by this role is that of backlog refinement. Just to remind... Continue Reading →
Agile Errors – Sashimi and Skateboards
Forewarned is forearmed for this post, I will admit that this evening has been largely filled with music of a more psychedelic nature. You can blame Jefferson Airplane for this, but if you stick with me for the journey you will learn the connection between fish, extreme sports and technology processes with nary a reference... Continue Reading →
Architecture and Agile
I'm involved in quite a few interviews as InvoiceFair grows its technical team. Interviews are always interesting; you get a sense of what's going on with the market, but also what people understand of the software development processes that operate within their own organisation and the subject of software development processes in general. Almost universally... Continue Reading →
DevOps – How Do I Explain This to the Business?
As we're growing our development team in InvoiceFair I've gone through a process of budget approval for hiring people. The process is pretty lightweight, but in an effort to be as thorough as possible, I put together an org chart, some lightweight role descriptions and so on. To be honest it was all going well,... Continue Reading →
Fixed Bid Projects and Estimation – Part 2
If managed not to slumber through Part 1 on estimation, then you find yourself waiting with bated breath for the dramatic climax of our tale of estimation and fixed bid projects. For the sake of this discussion, a fixed bid project is a project that has a fixed price based on a defined timeline. Of... Continue Reading →