Priority Inversion: The Silent Killer of High-Performing Development Teams
Priority Inversion silently kills team productivity when low-priority tasks block high-value features. Priority Inheritance protocols restore systematic value delivery.
When Your Sprint Falls Behind: The Shortest Processing Time Strategy That Agile Teams Wish They'd Known Earlier
Manufacturing’s Shortest Processing Time strategy adapted for failing sprints: prioritise quick wins within your sprint’s qualitative goal framework.
The ROI of Better Software Productivity Measurement (Real Numbers From Real Companies)
When you measure the right things, you unlock incredible potential. Let me share some real numbers from companies I’ve coached, demonstrating the tangible return on investment from a smarter approach to software productivity measurement:
Your Retrospectives Aren't Working Because You're Measuring the Wrong Things
“Same issues, different sprint.” Does that resonate with your team? Your retrospectives dutifully identify problems, action items are meticulously recorded, and then… nothing fundamentally changes. The real issue often isn’…
Why Your Sprint Velocity Isn't Telling You What You Think It Is (And What to Measure Instead)
Once upon a time, there was a brilliant developer who got everything they thought they wanted – a promotion to CTO.
Every day, they would look at their dashboard showing im…
The Productivity Paradox: Why Adding More Developers Slows Down Your Delivery
Despite expanding an engineering team and investing in advanced tools, delivery timelines worsened due to a misleading focus on individual productivity over system productivity. Increasing developer numbers led to communication overhead, dependency conflicts, and context switching. Shifting to flow-centric metrics improved collaboration and sustainable productivity, enabling faster, higher-quality delivery.
Timeboxing, Getting value out of Timeboxing beyond the methodology you use.
Timeboxing is a vital practice in Agile methodologies, enhancing productivity and predictability. It structures work within iteration-based frameworks like Scrum and XP, creating urgency and facilitating planning. In continuous methodologies like Kanban, it maintains focus and allows for efficient process improvements. Overall, timeboxing drives measurable outcomes and sustainable productivity across various environments.
The Problem with Long Deadlines
Extending deadlines in software projects often reduces productivity, as evidenced by the ‘Beginning, Middle, and End’ cycle. Adopting shorter two-week? iterations enhances focus, feedback value, and engagement, while maintaining a sense of urgency. This approach stabilizes team velocity and promotes effective breakdown of tasks, ultimately optimizing workflow and delivering quality outcomes.
Maintaining Efficient Progress Meetings
Progress meetings, or Daily Scrums, are essential for team progress and adaptability in software development. However, many teams fall into common traps, such as only reporting tasks instead of fostering collaboration. With remote work and dynamic team structures, it’s crucial to adapt these meetings to encourage open discussions, diverse participation, and effective communication.
Adding developers to an agile project disrupts Velocity: Brooks law re-interpreted
This post presents Brook’s law as a systemic issue, and how to interpret it for agile projects.