Agile 2011

I’m back from Agile 2011. Another week spent in one of the most beautiful parts of America, with sunny days in the 70’s—spent in windowless, air-conditioned rooms with a bunch of computer geeks. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The Agile conference continues to...

Trust the Process

“This is never going to work. I don’t get it.  Why are we doing this?” “Don’t worry, Cody.” I’m teaching one of my 16-year-old son’s friends how to do an affinity analysis on some data he’d collected for a high school “critical thinking” project. Sometimes I’m not...

Simple Methods for Reliable User Involvement

Hugh will be presenting at the Agile conference again this year, talking about basic techniques for getting users involved in your Agile sprints. From the conference program: One of the difficult problems faced by an Agile team is that of getting reliable user input....

Phase 0

Here’s the challenge: Has any Agile project ever kicked off without a Phase 0? I don’t think so, but I’d love to hear from readers who want to prove me wrong. For those coming late to the party, there’s an ongoing debate in the Agile community about Phase 0. One Agile...

Digital Publishing: A view from the trenches

Pitfalls encountered when moving from print to digital publishing While I’ve had a long and varied work experience, the most formative part of my career was when I worked in professional publishing, where I was part of a team put together to move my company from print...