“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]

I just got back from SXSW 2013. Okay, maybe it was a few weeks ago, but I definitely want to pass along some of what I learned there. This blog discusses Sid Meier's insights on incorporating unconventional psychology. [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]

We actually do a lot of hard-science R&D at Sphere of Influence. Among our specialties is developing the most sophisticated behavioral profiling technologies in the world. Our algorithms isolate anomalies in all kinds of noisy data, finding that needle in a stack of needles, and doing useful stuff too. One of the coolest things we’ve developed lately is our insider cyber-threat detection technology that detects unusual behaviors on private networks. [More]

When Ms. Pac Man first came out in 1982, I quickly became a big fan and would play for hours in one sitting. With all of that practice, I was a top player. I remember vividly striving to reach each of the three intermissions where a short animation played before taking me to the next levels. During the intermission period, I would take a short breather and psychologically prepare myself for what was next. The oscillation between intense play with intermission periods was intoxicating. I would not even dream about walking away from a game once I started one. [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]