People / Software / Roller Derby / Cosmology
I’ve been doing lots of reading recently on happiness; what it is, how it’s measured and its impact on our lives. One thing that has really jumped out at me is the relationship between happiness and health. In one study they measured the happiness of 193 people aged between 21 and 55 and then infected […]
I really enjoyed my recent conversation with the DotNetRocks guys on Punishment Driven Development – if you’re interested you can listen to it here dotnetrocks.com/?show=1406
Have you ever been in a meeting with someone who is getting very angry with you? I had this situation only a week or two after I joined a new organisation. I could tell he was angry because he was having to work really hard to control his voice, his hands were shaking and his […]
Earlier this year I was privileged to meet Tim Bourguignon and to have a discussion with him about my journey in development. If you’re interested you can hear that discussion or visit Tim’s #DevJourney site, which covers the whole project with particular emphasis on the next generation of developers. Pretty cool.
Have you ever worked in a team where there was one team member who nobody liked and who nobody wanted to work with? I joined an organisation where one of the teams had an ‘odd man out’. He wasn’t as fast on the uptake as the other developers, he always asked lots of basic and […]
What has the world of safety engineering got to teach us about how to avoid or minimise injury in roller derby and how can that be applied to accidental issues in software? I’m very excited to have written an NDC guest blog on the subject. http://ndc-blog.ghost.io/software-safety-lessons-from-the-world-of-roller-derby/
Quite a few years ago I was working as a technical project manager (for my sins) and I was running a software project. The team were great and we delivered lots of value whilst having fun. There were a few small changes which we needed to the core systems, which were written in a different […]
Recently I’ve been mulling over the Spotify model for organisation of software teams and how widely it could be applied within the software industry. For those of you newer to the concept I’ll give you a quick description here but I also suggest that you read the original paper. Squad – A multi-functional team which […]
I spoke at #agileinthecity this week on Punishment Driven Development and I was asked an interesting question. “What if a team member doesn’t want to do a good job?” Should we punish someone who just isn’t trying? Should we let them know that their behaviour is unacceptable? Should we start hard performance management? It’s my […]
What is the first thing we do when a major issue occurs in a live system? Sort it out of course. Then we start the hunt for the person to blame so that they can suffer the appropriate punishment. What do we do if a person is being awkward in the team and won’t agree […]
Louise Elliott (@IvanaTerrorBull) 