Complexity is tough for humans to handle. In 2007 a HBR paper broke down decision making into a model with four domains “chaotic — complex — complicated — and simple”. While the whole paper on the Cynefin model is worthwhile reading, it had this in particular to say about complexity…

Note: any resemblance to projects past or present or dead is purely coincidental Once upon a time there was a wealthy King that lived in a giant glass palace. Life in the palace was generally good and there was a buzz of excitement about the place. …

I started off my career in IT as a tester or test manager and I’ve had twenty odd years of working around the world on companies big and small. Just when I thought the IT industry had stagnated and was subsiding into a morass of blunt instruments and simplistic aphorisms…

I started my testing career eighteen years ago, mostly by accident. I was a programmer doing tech support for a multimedia conference when I struck up a conversation with one of the presenters. …

The way we measure production is fatally flawed. In fact the way we look at work is fatally flawed. In traditional service and manufacturing, managers are tasked with keeping men and machines busy. If the ‘plant’ is busy then it must be productive. …

I first encountered Agile in 1999 in London — and I wasn’t impressed. But in about 2009 I came across agile again, as head of Testing at Bankwest; and agile had changed. It had got smarter — it had grown up. But it wasn’t until I started studying Lean that…

The Problem with Specifications The traditional way of building software is to write down everything that the customer wants in a document called a specification or requirements document. It doesn’t work very well. Here’s something I wrote way back in 2005–06 : In technical software projects, clients are generally unfamiliar with not only the…

There is a common ‘wisdom’ these days that software development should move faster. From agile to continuous delivery and DevOps, everything is about the need for speed. But many people struggle to understand the benefits of ‘faster’. At a gut level people believe that the faster they go the more…

I came across an interesting example of perspective the other day. A large company I was working with (and shall remain nameless) had commissioned a vendor to build and supply a software product. …