The agility Challenge for Embedded Software

The agility Challenge for Embedded Software If you’ve ever worked for a business that has it’s core focus in the embedded software space, I suspect you are more likely to have had to tolerate software development practices from 20 years ago. If you’ve read many books on Agile software development, DevOps or other modern practices, […]

7 practical steps to increase accountability in agile teams

7 practical steps to increase accountability in agile teams At the points in my career that I have seen senior management push back on the adoption of agile methodologies, the main areas of contention has been around the feeling of losing “control” over the delivery roadmap. Agile methodologies accept and embrace the fact that the […]

Complexity as a software metric

Complexity as a software metric I’ve never been completely sold on Cyclomatic Complexity as a metric, it maps to linearly independent paths through code which may be useful to get an indication on the level of testing an application needs, assuming code coverage is not available (another metric that needs to be treated with caution), […]

Autonomous teams vs ‘resource’ management

Autonomous teams vs ‘resource’ management How often have you heard the phrase “We don’t have the resource” or “How many resources will it take?” Quite apart from the dehumanising nature of the word “resource” (should we, in response, say “that’s a good question, management resource number 3”?), people are not automatons who are all equally […]

Why The Bottleneck Is Everything

Why The Bottleneck Is Everything This is probably the least intuitive idea that I’ve come across in my working career, but when explained and demonstrated, possibly one of the most important.Here it is: it is inefficient to have everyone working at 100% effort, 100% of the time.This seems wrong – we’re paying for these people, […]

What is Agility?

What is Agility? Strictly speaking, ‘agile’ is an adjective, a descriptive word… like “nimble” & so the more obvious title “What is agile?” probably would have made a small, hardcore, fraction of people up-chuck a little in their mouths. (I am not so offended on this one, but tell me something is “addicting” and I […]