I recently (re-)encountered the use of Lego as a metaphor for building and composing systems. There has been something lurking in the back of my head around this looking for a connection to make and I think I’ve realised what it is. When using Lego as a metaphor we need to be wary of what […]
A few years back (far more than I care to remember) I worked on a couple of patterns papers with Eoin Woods on the management and handling of errors. I wanted to reference them today the Blueskyline website has been a little up and down so while I get this fixed I thought I thought […]
“Cattle not pets” is a well-used analogy in cloud infrastructure about the change in mindset needed in order to embrace the power of infrastructure automation, auto-scaling, etc. Its point is that your servers are no longer lovingly hand-crafted machines named after characters from genres such as Lord of the Rings (guilty in a previous […]
In my experience, estimation is the topic most re-visited in a work context in large organisations, however the question of mobbing vs pairing vs pull requests runs it a pretty close second. As with all such topics, there is no absolute right and wrong answer as it very much depends on the scenario you find […]
I watched the recording of the first #TDDLive webinar session yesterday. It was a really good conversation (nice to see a fishbowl format in action) and I’d recommend watching it if you get the chance. The part of the conversation about mocks was interesting as panellists were bringing up their experience of codebases (or people […]
A friend asked me what advice I’d have about what makes for a good project kick-off, either from the supplier or customer side. I think from the supplier side, which is where I’ve gained most of my experience, I’d have to say setting of expectations, particularly for agile initiatives where there really is some uncertainty […]
Shamelessly adapted from Pink’s “Who Knew” (if you’re not familiar with the original you can see it on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=NJWIbIe0N90). You took my vote at that big poll You said that we’d take back control Uh huh That’s right I took your words and I believed In everything you said to me Yeah huh That’s […]
At Agile Manchester 2017, John Nolan and I ran a workshop entitled Technologists are amoral/unethical: what can be done?. The idea was to examine why digital technology is generally practiced as an amoral/unethical occupation and then to ask participants to propose practical things we could do to address our behaviours. The rest of this post is […]
I recently joined Co-op Digital as a Tech Lead in Co-op Funeralcare. The team I’m working with is a true multi-disciplinary team including UX specialists, subject matter experts seconded from the wider business and even a dedicated user researcher. It’s a talented and varied group of people. You can read more about what the team have […]
It started around 9pm on the day after the Leave vote. I was gobsmacked by this twitter exchange and felt compelled to respond to the second of Chris Matts‘ tweets. As someone who has lived outside the M25 all my life (bar about 6 weeks) I bridled at the idea that the blame for the lack […]
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