I frequently find myself in conversations about Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and its utility or lack thereof. My opinions are based on both direct experiences in an organization that started using it and from comparing notes with colleagues in other large organizations, including many who are SAFe certified. …

Continuous delivery can be a frustrating topic. Those of us who use this workflow will never go back to legacy ways of working. The lack of Fear Driven Development and objectively better results are amazing. We get so much joy from building things that deliver more value with less effort…

A “deepity” is a statement that sounds profound but isn’t. “To the extent that it’s true, it doesn’t have to matter. To the extent that it has to matter, it isn’t true (if it actually means anything).” <See Deepity> “Agile is a culture!” and “Agile is a mindset!” are deepities…

I was recently in a conversation on social media about the role of a software engineer. As a SWE, what you bring to the table is knowledge of efficient algorithms and data structures for general computation. …

I’m frequently asked what resources I’ve found most useful on my learning journey. Here are my recommendations for both technical and non-technical people who want to improve organizational outcomes. These are in no particular order. Engineering the Digital Transformation: (Everyone) The hardest part of organizational improvement is getting alignment on…

Continuous Delivery requires an entirely different mindset from classical artisanal delivery. For example, we always prioritize operations over development. If we cannot deploy something to our production environment, then nothing else matters. Therefore, the first feature to deliver is the ability to deploy to production. We deploy a Minimum Viable…

When starting on the journey to agility, the most common path is for an organization to hire a Certified Agile Consultant™ and learn about the Manifesto for Agile Software Development followed by Scrum. Then they spend time catching up to the present 20+ years of learning and hopefully learn that…

Continuous delivery is a powerful tool for delivering changes safely, reliably, and more frequently with less toil and burnout. CD is also the best tool for uncovering why we can’t do these. However, this is only true if we are really using CD. CD Improves Everything In 2017, the authors of Accelerate stated…

I’ve been a developer for a while. I’ve delivered using every industry fad that management has bought into. In 2003, the organization I worked for wanted to bring some discipline to our ad hoc processes so they sent senior developers and team managers to PMI training to become certified project…