Agile

  • As I write this there’s a group of about 15 developers and designers standing near my desk in a heated but constructive argument about how to check the design is right before the code heads off to QA. Occasionally the dichotomy of agile vs. waterfall is raised, and sometimes “agile” is used as a euphemism…

  • For over seven months I’ve been working with the good folks at Alexander Interactive on some ambitious work for MetLife. Here’s a peek into that work with a focus on process. I’m the guy at the whiteboard in the Tokyo board room on page 73 :-) Lean UX and Ecommerce Design: How Ai is transforming…

  • It looks like agile software development is having the same growing pains, expressed through semantics, as the design field (or the Design field). It’s the perceived misapplication of language that catches my eye… Jason Gorman argued that the meaning of Agile was ambiguous and was being inappropriately applied to a very wide range of approaches…

  • Another reason I like agile management is because when something bad happens, you should know as soon as you can. If you only check project status every week or longer, that can be way too late. It’s like what Robert Duvall says in The Godfather: “I have to go to the airport. The Godfather is…

  • The Sartorialist blog has been a big hit, with each post getting dozens of comments. Why? On the surface it’s the usual blogger story: an individual with insight on a particular topic publishes quickly and honestly sans organizational overhead. To me, the Sartorialist does something else important. He delineates the difference between art and design.…

  • Last year I hacked away at an article about the need for a greater degree of experimentation in marketing organizations, but it never really seemed to gel quite right, and eventually I abandoned it. I’m happy to see that Joseph Jaffe completed the task in Manifesto for Experimentation. Successful executives I’ve seen already embrace this…

  • Thomas J. Watson Jr., the head of I.B.M., which was famed for its militaristic corporate culture, was incredulous over Norris’s operation. So lean, so ragtag, so bafflingly humane. In a 1963 memo, Watson wondered how Control Data achieved with just a few dozen people what he had not with several thousand. Control Data later went…

  • The [[37Signals]] Getting Real book is now available free online as well as in PDF and paperback formats. With a focus on building web apps, it’s a great perspective on using an agile/craft way of working. It’s also a clever publishing strategy, analogous to the traditional hardcover/paperback progression: Test and then build crazy excitement around…

  • Fortune magazine has rewritten Jack Welch’s rules on management to reflect changes in the business environment. Jack’s first rule was Big dogs own the street and Fortune says that rule should now be Agile is best; being big can bite you. With the rate of change in business today, it’s hard to argue with the…

  • Iterating on paper? Cheap. Iterating in software? Still pretty cheap. Iterating the Airbus A380? Not so cheap: “Airbus said Tuesday that it would produce only 9 of its giant new A380 jets next year, not the 25 planned, because of numerous design changes…. Small changes, like moving small pieces of equipment, were cascading through the…

  • 37 Signals’ new book Getting Real is out, and looks like a great read about applying agile techniques and spirit to web app development. It’s agile both in the content and in having small chapters, something we’ve seen in books like Godin’s Purple Cow and what I’m working on by re-interpreting agile principles for general…

  • I’m finding examples of agile work practices in more and more places, and see them as perfectly aligned with the application of design practice in innovation services. Here’s a running list… Agile programming has the most robust expression, including a philosophy, an alliance of various approaches, tools, software, and measured results. Agile project management Get…

  • I love seeing big companies move in agile ways (because it’s so unusual), even if it only arises from panic of losing their old revenue streams. Here’s an example from Lockheed, whose old culture (despite their Skunk Works-style innovation) included bitter internal fights over whether to pursue unmanned aircraft… …It also designed and delivered the…

  • Malcolm Gladwell’s The Bakeoff is now online, in which the food R&D firm Mattson tries to create the perfect cookie. Project Delta created three teams: one traditional in-house team, an “XP” (extreme programming) team of two people, and an “open source” dream team of the industry’s best working remotely. For anyone thinking about how to…

  • Fairly Good Practices from the Agile community (of which the design and management communities can learn a lot).