Teamwork at agile-RTP

58 members of agile-RTP and I explored communication in agile teams March 2, 2010. I appreciate the turnout. The rain and temperature were falling. We kept warm and had a great time. Here’s the slide deck I had time for.

Thank you again to Jeff Barschaw, the other agile-RTP organizers, and agile-RTP members!

What Does an Agile Coach Do?

Every so often I meet someone who asks, “Don, what do you do?” Over the years I’ve found the best way to answer this question involves asking what that person does, and then share part of my coaching experience that relates to what they do. You see, an agile coach does many things. What I [...]

Developing Developer Skills

Things change quickly in the world of software development. I started my career writing in Fortran 77. I stayed fairly abreast of languages until C++ and Java. I wandered by the Pragmatic Bookshelf to see what’s new. Languages/Frameworks I’ve barely heard of include: Erlang, ANTLR, Stripes, Cocoa, Scala, Groovy and Clojure. I see that [...]

Skills for Software Smokejumpers

Do you know about smokejumpers? They’re brave, self-sufficient firefighters who parachute into remote areas wearing eighty pounds of gear and ready to fight a forest fire. If the jump goes well, they land safely. After extinguishing the fire, they may have a ten-mile hike out. It’s not a job for the faint of heart, slow of mind, or weak of back.

Have you considered that you may be a smokejumper? [...]

Managing in Mayberry: An examination of three distinct leadership styles

Although the main highway bypassed the town years ago, the namesake for the popular 1960s television series is still a bustling community, and a fair amount of traffic enters Mayberry’s downtown from the north on the US Highway 52 business spur every morning. In town for a week of consulting work, we were able to observe the recent road construction along that route and watched a trio of local citizens demonstrate their own unique management styles. Let’s take a look at how these characters traffic management closely parallels common styles of software project [...]