Steve Freeman

Joseph Pelrine and I are involved in (or is that “committed to”?) starting up a Narrative Inquiry project with the Agile Alliance under their Agile Narratives programme. This one will be done jointly with Cognitive Edge using the Cynefin approach, here’s their announcement.

I’ve started a Yahoo Group for people who are interested.

What is […]

I bumped into an old colleague recently who told me her tale of woe.

She’d been consulting for a while with a small business that provides quite a successful online service. The company had been bought out and, for a while, she improved their naive development practices while coping with complexities such as a new CTO […]

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a little while and now I feel triggered by Keith Braithwaite’s especially grumpy contribution.

I’ve had a few discussions around the “Has Agile Lost Its Mojo” session, including with Keith. One person called me an elitist, which is an interesting term of disapproval around an investment bank. Clarke […]

I know this is the right way to teach, it’s just taking me quite a while to get there.Stockhausen later said: “In many respects Messiaen did the opposite of what I wanted. He never tried to convince me. That made him a good teacher. He did not give instruction in composition, but showed me how […]

There are some upsides to the recent massive data loss from the UK’s tax authority.
First, even though there was a delay, they did admit the loss and someone senior took the rap. There are too many organisations where this kind of news would never be allowed out.
Second, this breach has been large enough to make […]

I have an allergic reaction to events called “Summit”, but judging from this posting it sounds like there were some interesting discussions.

Indirectly, I can second the comment on Israel Gat’s presentation, I shepherded a BMC experience report for Agile 2007 and it sounds like a very effective organisational turnaround. The author was so enthusiastic, I […]

A brilliant fable about how good ideas get corrupted. Is your organisation at Phase 8 yet?

via Dave Snowden

I recently bumped into a McKinsey report on Applying lean to application development and maintenance (free after registration).

There are some good points in the report, such as cleaning up the prioritization process, cross-training staff, and pushing quality throughout the process. They also recognise that it takes a while to convert, and that it’s important […]

Here’s a posting from Rod Van Meter to comp.risks. on 23rd July 2007. I’ll just quote it.

By now everyone has heard of the M6.8 earthquake up in Niigata last week, a couple of hours north of Tokyo by shinkansen. Ten people were killed (all in their 70s and 80s, living in traditional-style houses […]

My reading of this article is that it says that people in charge should concentrate on the people and on setting policy at their level because they’re unlikely to be open to lower-level issues.

“There are good components to power’s effects on a person, in that it helps lead people to action, but sometimes these actions […]