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So who's your team's coach?
Professional sports teams have skilled players, complex playbooks, and ongoing training to improve their skills. These are the basic necessities. But there is one critical thing needed to pull all this together to create a winning team...a top notch coach. The coach takes the raw player talent and leverages each one's abilities to create and integrated team, customizes the plays to work best for this particular team, and ensures they get the specific training needed to improve their skills.
 Software development is a team sport. Your development team also has talented team members, uses playbooks (i.e. development processes and techniques), and needs ongoing skills training.  So who's your team's coach?
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The Leadership and Communication Lessons of Josey Wales – Part 1 by Bob Maksimchuk, Principal Consultant Project Pragmatics, LLC www.ProjectPragmatics.com Rmaksimchuk@ProjectPragmatics.com
Sometimes you can learn important lessons from unconventional sources. If you are unaware, the classic 1976 movie western The Outlaw Josey Wales, set near the end of the U.S. Civil War, was directed by and starred Clint Eastwood, who played the main character Josey Wales. The writers may not have intended it; however this movie is replete with leadership and communication lessons that are applicable to executives, project managers, team members, or any of us especially in difficult times on our projects. You currently may not be in a leadership position but some day may need to lead. All of us do need to effectively communicate with those that we work with. You often hear the lament that technical people need to develop “soft skills”. So let’s see what we can learn from Josey Wales ... Read More The UML Survey Results Are In by Bob Maksimchuk, Principal Consultant Project Pragmatics, LLC www.ProjectPragmatics.com Rmaksimchuk@ProjectPragmatics.com
In April, I invited one and all to participate in a simple survey to see how they are actually using the UML on projects. Is it really mainstreamed? Is it still in the adoption phase? Or is it in decline? The survey is now closed. Thanks to those who participated. Here are the results. Read More
Are We Agile Yet? Are We Agile Yet? by Bob Maksimchuk, Principal Consultant Project Pragmatics, LLC www.ProjectPragmatics.com Rmaksimchuk@ProjectPragmatics.com
That question is not nearly as irritating as “Are we there yet?” being chanted ceaselessly from the backseat on a long summer road trip. But I have heard it asked in many development shops who are trying to “become agile”. The question is somewhat puzzling. What is the real intent of their question? Are they looking for a blessing “Yea, thou art agile. Now go forth and Scrum.”? Is “agile” a badge they are looking to wear? If so, they are missing the point. They need to ask a better question.
Agile is more about the journey than a specific destination. You should maintain awareness of how well the journey is going instead of how long you’ve been traveling. How can we explain this, in a simple manner, to those who don’t yet grasp the purpose of agility or never understood the values that agility promotes? Ask instead how well you are doing in achieving or following the various agile principles, such as: ... Read More
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