Over the past few years, agile has overtaken the development scene from being a buzzword to being implemented everywhere, or so it seems. Is anyone claiming not to be  agile these days?

I believe the benefits of Agile development still stand. Enhanced visibility and adaptability, reduced risks and increased business value, if implemented properly. But the way it’s used in most teams today, it hardly meets any of these criteria.

In the mid 90’s I was implementing Six Sigma which is based ...

Successfully motivate my team is an ongoing challenge, quite sophisticated yet rewarding. It’s like steering a ship toward its destination, keeping course without ever arriving. Motivating factors are based on two influencing environments. The existence of a comfortable, clean environment free of negative mental and physical impacts (foundation), and stimulating influences that strive for and enhance satisfaction and contentment (stimulation).

For example, how could we expect a team to be motivated if their environment in uncomfortable, dirty or hazardous? Or would a ...

This article is not about the usual subjects, like motivation, communication etc. What I’m talking about is consciously planning to build, improve and measure key metrics of a development team. Often times, teams get built over time with little awareness of their dynamic. “We’re swamped, we need a javascript developer”, or “For this project, we got to add another dba” and so it goes. Before we know it, the team has grown and if we don’t define the values of our ...