Over the course of 3 days, close to forty product practitioners, founders and coaches met at Ubud, Bali to meet, learn and feast together, all for the purpose of deepening our understanding of how to build great product experiences. These are seven things I learnt from Product G&T 2018. 1. Being outside, leads to out-there … Continue reading Seven Things I Learnt from Product G&T Retreat 2018
How to stop spreading negative feelings in the workplace. You are a manager leading a team. You had a great morning, cleared your inbox, completed a slide deck and you are heading to a one-to-one with John. You see him, greet and proceed to start the conversation. John looks frazzled, anxious, angry even. The conversation … Continue reading How to stop negative feelings from affecting your conversations
Measuring Performance with Indicators and Metrics Management guru Peter Drucker who pioneered modern management is often quoted saying: "You can't manage what you don't measure" To manage performance we must first define performance. What is performance? My simplified definition of performance has three components: what we want, how long to get it, and what we're … Continue reading The two sides of measuring performance
How to handle code reviews. One of my Scrum Masters asked me this question: Can we skip code reviews? It's too expensive. The concern was that it was taking too long for a reviewer to get back to the review requester. The Scrum Master then wanted to scrap code reviews so that code could be … Continue reading How to handle code reviews
To manage scope creep, Product Owners must behave like night club bouncers. Every project suffers from scope creep as it is impossible to identify all the requirements of a project before it ends. The how of managing creep is not to eliminate it, but to manage what's in an what out. To illustrate managing scope … Continue reading To manage scope creep, Product Owners must be nightclub bouncers
How to pair program Pair programming was introduced in the book eXtreme Programming by Kent Beck . I've come across many teams which said it did not work or that it was inefficient. Pair programming is definitely not for everyone and every piece of work, however most teams that I've talked to that tried it, … Continue reading How to Pair Program
Using Value Stream Mapping as a Gap Analysis Tool Value stream mapping is an extremely powerful tool. As a way of finding gaps in practice or understanding of a process or methodology, I frequently use value stream mapping as a way to tease out information from the team on how they actually work. Frequently we … Continue reading Using Value Stream Mapping as a Gap Analysis Tool
