For most of my career, I was the one who would always complain over the deadlines. Why the hell do we have them? Why are you bothering everyone to estimate stuff instead of letting us do the actual work? Why the hell are you trying to limit my creativity by trying to put a calendar on it? […]
Retrospective of a Retrospective
You know, I think that Sprint Retrospective has to be the second most hated misunderstood meeting; first one being, you guessed it – a Daily meeting. And yet, that’s a pity. It’s a pity because this is not just something that we should be doing as part of our job, but as part of […]
The Product Owner’s Curse
I worked with many Product Owners. Dozens, to be more precise. Youngsters and oldies; aggressive and chilled-out; domain experts and newcomers. And yet, one thing is for sure – boy, do I think that role is cursed! I will focus this article on the traits that I found useful in POs that we enjoyed […]
Oh no, daily again!
This has got to be the second most discussed “issue” (first one being “story points vs hours”). “Why do we have dailies?” “What’s the purpose of reporting (or raporting) my status day after day?” “Why am I being micromanaged?” etc. Truthfully, I’m in favor of them. Seriously. I guess we could probably do without […]
Story Points that mistook themselves for Hours
It’s funny really. For whatever reason, I always assumed that pretty much anybody who uses story points actually knows WHAT they are. And why they are different than hours. Yet, as in pretty much all of my assumptions that I end up writing about – I was wrong. And not just “wrong” but wrong […]
Art of Finishing Things
You would think that starting or sustaining at anything is hard enough, right? But once you do start and once you do keep doing it, assuming that there’s an actual end to it, you’d expect it to be easy, no? Since you overcame the static friction and (hopefully) managed to do it for long […]
Art of Sustaining at Things
I never really planned on writing this article. The original idea was to publish Art of Starting Things and move on. “Man, why stop there?”, said my Aussie friend. “Starting is not enough. You have to write about Sustaining and Finishing things”. And honestly, it got me thinking. It’s a fact really. Starting anything […]
Art of Starting Things (or How to Start Doing Things That You’ve Been Delaying Forever)
Interestingly enough, it took me four months to start writing an article about starting things. I’m not kidding: I did publish the bucket of sh*t one after two months, but this one took a while. Which I think is a perfect starting ground for analyzing what I wanted to write about anyway – why […]
Guide to Surviving Job Interviews (as narrated by an Interviewer)
I’ve been sitting on the “other” side of the table for a while now. Did around hundred of them. Primarily for software engineering positions, but I had my shot of fun with QA, sys admins and many others. Frankly, I’ve always loved them. They kind of combine couple of passions that I deeply enjoy […]
I’m as anxious as you are; I just choose to do it
Have you ever looked at someone and thought – “wow, that’s so easy for them! I wish I was that fearless”. That ever happened to you? I’m not talking about successful people only, but pretty much anybody. Just by observing others doing things that scare us, we assume that they aren’t dealing with negative […]