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Dumbbell Delivery; Antifragile Software
Not online fitness shopping. Not the brogrammer pumping iron. This is a brief discussion of Antifragile – the latest book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb – and relevant insights for software delivery or other complex work. This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive exploration of the topics. It’s more a join-the-dots exercise, and it’s left up to the…
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Narrative Visualisation Tools
I use narrative visualisations a lot. I like to frame evidence so that it commands attention, engages playful minds, and tells its own story (see also Corporate Graffiti). I’ll put new tools on GitHub as I create them. Here are three to start. Visualising Stand-Up Attendance I used the Space Invader metaphor with a busy leadership team…
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Visual Knowledge Cycles
Visualisation is a key tool for the management of knowledge, especially knowledge from data. We’ll explore different states of knowledge, and how we can use visualisation to drive knowledge from one state to another, as individual creators of visualisation and agents within an organisation or society. (There’s some justifiable cynicism about quadrant diagrams with superimposed crap circles. But, give me…
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Corporate Graffiti – Being Disruptive with Visual Thinking
As you go about your work you’ll come up against walls. Some walls will be blank and boring blockers to progress. These need decoration; spraying with layers that confer meaning. So pick a corner and start doodling. With a new perspective, you’ll find a way around the blockers. Other walls will come with messages – by…
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Seeing Stars – Bespoke AR for Mobiles
I presented on the development of the awesome Fireballs in the Sky app (iOS and Android) at YOW! West with some great app developers. See the PDF. (NB. there were a lot of transitions) Abstract We’ll explore the development of the Fireballs in the Sky app, designed for citizen scientists to record sightings of meteorites…
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Playing Games is Serious Business
Simple game scenarios can produce the same outcomes as complex and large-scale business scenarios. Serious business games can therefore reduce risk and improve outcomes when launching and optimising services. Gamification also improves alignment and engagement across organisational functions. This is a presentation on using games to understand and improve organisational design and service delivery, which…
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Iterative vs Incremental Flashcard
Sometimes, the difference between incremental and iterative (software) product development is subtle. Often it is crucial to unlocking early value or quickly eliminating risk – an iterative approach will do this for you, while incremental will not. Let’s review the distinction. Incremental means building something piece by piece, like creating a picture by finishing a jigsaw…
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The Like-for-Like Project Antipattern
Like-for-like replacement. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? That’s an easy project to deliver, right? Wrong. Why would we do a like-for-like (L4L) project? The IT group may want to upgrade to a new system, because the old one is broken, or because they’ve found something better. Maybe we want to avoid re-training users. Or, maybe…
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Backwards Prioritisation
Imagine you’re in the middle of a big software project. Maybe, you’re replacing an internal system, or something like that. You make an observation: when asked to prioritise, everyone wants to go last. They want to hang on to the status quo for as long as possible. Instead of beating down your door to get…
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Data Visualisation: Good for Business
It was great to be part of the recent ThoughtWorks data visualisation event in Perth. There’s a summary on the ThoughtWorks Insights channel. Visualisation is a topic I love talking about – especially demonstrating why it’s good for business – and presenting with Ray Grasso was a lot of fun. Here’s the full video of…