Experiences in Managing Software Development Through Kanban & Trello

Introduction

On my last project, I managed a team developing an application to manage hospitality locations. Given our requirements were constantly in flux, the contracts were on a short cycle, and the team was generally new to enterprise software development, I chose a Kanban style approach to managing and delivering it. I wanted to share with you the rationale, methodology, challenges, and the surprising change to my role while on the project.
Continue reading “Experiences in Managing Software Development Through Kanban & Trello”

Kanban Paper Airplane Factory

I went to the local Capital Kanban meetup yesterday evening. It was a bunch of Project Managers discussing Kanban and waste in IT. Seemed completely out of my comfort zone and a way to meet new people in tech here in town so I attended. It turned out to be really cool and way more interesting than my expectations were. I wanted to mention some of those here, specifically some of the IT wastes that were mentioned I see all the time, the insights I got from the paper airplane factory game, and some after meeting talk that changed my perspective on what I perceive as problems in our industry with good software east of California (hah, trick question, there IS no good software done east of California…).

Continue reading “Kanban Paper Airplane Factory”

Consulting Chronicles #5: Getting In, and Out, of the Industry

Today, I’ll talk about how to get into consulting, what the skills and expectations are, and what can cause you to get out.

What is Consulting?

Consulting in the Flash/Flex world usually consists of 3 tasks that may be related:

  1. Offer your architecture expertise.
  2. Offer your code mechanic expertise.
  3. Augment an existing team.

Continue reading “Consulting Chronicles #5: Getting In, and Out, of the Industry”

Agile Chronicles #12: Technical Debt

I know it may sound like I’m painting a rosy, infallible picture of Scrum.  It’s the truth, though, and I feel like it solved most of my project problems.  There is, however, one main problem I saw that made Scrum, and Iterative Development in general, fall flat on its face.  It’s called Technical Debt, and it’s a problem with programming in general, not Scrum/Agile.  When it rears its head in Scrum, the effects are devastating, and I believe one of the main reasons Scrum fails for a lot of people.

This article will discuss what Technical Debt is from a Flash/Flex developer perspective, how it negatively affects my Scrum projects, and what are some of the prescribed ways to prevent it.  Nothing ground breaking here folks, just corroboration that TD IS a major problem, and not even Scrum is immune.

Continue reading “Agile Chronicles #12: Technical Debt”