“The challenge is knowing what to kill and what to keep, what’s essential and what isn’t. People have a tendency to want more even when it it’s not necessarily good for them“. Are you adding, adding, adding to your products and calling it innovation? Do you have any process for considering the wholeness and strong-center of a product as a way of filtering the features that go into it? [More]

What happens when two well-designed features, each with strong individual merit, don’t pleasantly coexist in the same product or system? The problem isn’t with either feature; the problem is the mix of features, or the way in which they are mixed. We occasionally see examples of this in games, but it’s extremely common in mission and enterprise software. [More]

Agilewashing is a tradition as old as Agile itself; however with Scrum’s rise in popularity we are seeing the practice go completely epidemic. Projects race to declare themselves Agile in large numbers by implementing superficial practices and ignoring more demanding practices that fundamentally improve software production. An agilewashed project looks Agile on the outside but lacks authenticity when the hood is lifted to examine the inside. These projects are doomed to underperform in such large numbers that the Agile brand itself could be at risk. And yes, I blame the industry’s thickening layer of Certified Scum Masters as the main culprits. [More]

What one word best describes Agile? Is it Iterative, Flexible, Disciplined, Transparent, or something bigger? More importantly, what do most people think that one word is? Are the Agilistas eating too much of their own dog food? Are we walking into a trap that we’ve been caught in before? [More]

Just a few weeks back, I attended SXSW. At the conference it was clear we are in the midst of a “maker revolution”, referring to a do-it-yourself (DIY) community of people who create and build products. Makers make things. [More]

A design approach that results in strongly centered products that exude wholeness, consistency, and uniqueness. It's an introduction to a larger design philosophy. [More]