Enjoying Meetings October 12, 2011 | John Rusk | 2 Comments I’m reading the book “Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when the Stakes are High”. It’s absolutely excellent. And not just for conversations when the stakes are high – but also when the stakes are rather more mundane, such as your typical day-to-day business meeting. I’ve been consciously trying to apply the principles from the book… Read More
Email Subscriptions September 26, 2011 | John Rusk You can now subscribe to email updates from this blog. This should be handy if you prefer email to RSS. Just go to the new Subscribe page on the menu bar. PS If you spot any problems with the email subscription, please let me know. I’ve never used this particular email plug-in before, so I… Read More
Million, Billion, Trillion September 11, 2011 | John Rusk | 2 Comments Humans are bad at understanding large numbers. Our education system successfully trains us to understand the relative magnitudes of small numbers, but for larger numbers we tend to fall back on an intuitive logarithmic scale. So we underestimate the real difference between, say, a million and a billion. Here’s a wee table I put together,… Read More
It’s Alive! August 5, 2011 | John Rusk | 5 Comments My new Agile scope management tool is now live! It’s called Tactyle, in reference to its emphasis on touching and interacting with the content of your project. Other key design principles include: simple, effective, and fully-automated Earned Value – in keeping with my blog posts in recent years suitable for fixed price and/or fixed scope… Read More
Looking for beta testers for agile tool July 26, 2011 | John Rusk After years of thinking about it, and months of actually developing it, I’m now looking for beta testers for a brand new agile tool. If you like the sound of “Story Mapping + Big Visible Charts + Simplicity”, send me an email (address here), and I’ll reply with a link to the product. If you… Read More
Key Resources May 26, 2011 | John Rusk Here’s a brief summary of the key Earned Value resources on this blog: Earned Value in two sentences: Earned Value in a Nutshell Introduction, from a Agile perspective: Agile Charts Introduction, from a classic Earned Value Management (aerospace/DoD) perspective: Software Tech News article (was also re-printed in the PMI’s Measurable News) A comprehensive 30-page article,… Read More
Converting Apples to Oranges May 20, 2011 | John Rusk There are two common errors when forecasting the final cost of a project. One is to compare actual cost with planned cost. The other is to compare actual progress with planned progress. Both are wrong. Earned Value teaches us that the only valid measure is to compare actual cost with actual progress. This may seem… Read More
Agile 2011 Keynotes Look Good May 14, 2011 | John Rusk | 1 Comment The three keynote presentations for Agile 2011 have been announced. I’m thrilled to see that two of them are on the people side of agile, rather than the technical side. Barbara Fredrickson will speak on how positive emotions feed a virtuous circle in the workplace, and Linda Rising will talk about how viewing ourselves as… Read More
Conversation with the Situation – a Software Example February 24, 2011 | John Rusk | 1 Comment As I posted recently, professionals in many fields work by having a “conversation with the situation”. What does this really mean, in software development? To answer that question, I’ve decided to share a recent design episode from a system I’m working on. I’ll try to capture the full “conversation with the situation” – both my… Read More
Compliance to Spec Considered Unprofessional February 22, 2011 | John Rusk | 1 Comment In keeping with the theme of this blog, which is “the neglected essentials of software development”, I’d like to share something I’ve learned recently. It’s about how Professional people in other fields think – people like architects, town planners and doctors.… Read More