Discipline without freedom is tyranny; freedom without discipline is chaos (Cullen Hightower). Morning Star is the largest tomato processor in the United States with 400 employees and over $700 million in annual revenues. Morning Star’s CEO, Chris Rufer, built a successful company on the principle of self-management where everyone is responsible for coordinating with colleagues, customer, [...]
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“Over’s” Usefulness in Decision Making
The Agile Manifesto was written in a very deliberate style, for example, “Individuals and interactions over process and tools.” The word “over” was carefully chosen and establishes a key agile principle that many things in our world are too complex for black or white answers so we need to differentiate between what is critical and [...]
Micromanaging Angst
I’ve always been concerned that some agile practices are applied even when they are not appropriate for a particular situation. I’ve called this Agile 101, learning the basics, that Alistair Cockburn calls the Shu level of learning ( Shu-Ha-Ri are the three levels). All too often some agile practice or misunderstood principle will be inappropriately [...]
Velocity is Killing Agility!
As I talk with companies around the world it’s clear that a significant number of them are still mired in the productivity, efficiency, and optimization mud. It’s easy to spot them because they are often maniacal about measuring velocity—team velocity, velocity across teams, rolling up velocity to an organizational level or even velocity per developer [...]
Interview with Kent Beck (circa 2001)
At the Agile 2011 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. One thing that occurred to me about how to celebrate this was to re-publish abbreviated versions of my interviews with several of the 17 authors. These interviews were published in my 2002 book, Agile Software Development Ecosystems. They reflect the state of [...]
An Interview with Alistair Cockburn (circa 2001)
At the Agile 2011 we celebrated the 10th anniversary of the Agile Manifesto. One thing that occurred to me about how to celebrate this was to re-publish abbreviated versions of my interviews with several of the 17 authors. These interviews were published in my 2002 book, Agile Software Development Ecosystems. They reflect the state [...]
Reflections on Agile 2011
For me, the first 2 days of Agile 2011 were a whirlwind. On Monday I co-chaired a milestone event—the Agile Executive Forum—in which 60 senior executives demonstrated that agility isn’t confined to delivery teams. From the opening keynote about innovation, agility, and social business networks to a discussion of a multi-year 400 person firmware project [...]
Affiliations
- APLN.org - Cofounder & Board Member
- Agile Alliance - Cofounder
