Opinions on the evolution of management and leadership. Taking a strong look at personal, team and process improvement.
I've been hearing a lot lately about 'swarming', especially in regards to getting things over the line. This often seems to be in the context of a sprint end, or some other self-imposed deadline, with a request for developers to swarm on a small set of stories or tasks that have not been completed on… Continue reading The Perils of Swarming
There comes a time when something is so ubiquitous that is starts to lose it’s original purpose. This usually happens when a process or method reaches critical mass, is often ‘standardised’ and everyone you speak to utters something along the lines of “ah yeah, that…”. Scrum is a perfect large scale example of this, but… Continue reading User Stories are Broken
I work in a traditional company with a traditional holiday policy. It boils down to being given 28 days holiday and being told to use them all by the end of the year. So in a week or so I'll have a new stock of 28 holiday days in my bank to use when I… Continue reading You Need Two Holiday Policies
At work, you can get hold of me in a number of different ways You can send me an email You can send me a message on Slack You can even send me a message on Lync (when it's not crashing) You can actually come over and talk to me And yet, with all those… Continue reading Why I’m Not Answering My Phone
In response to Supporting Peer to Peer Appreciation I received the following comment on Twitter https://twitter.com/tenpn/status/656063989206654976 I replied with the following https://twitter.com/lee_winder/status/656581234936672257 https://twitter.com/lee_winder/status/656581749749714944 But as I indicated in the first reply, it’s worth a post in it’s own right. Two Very Different Outcomes Lets take two examples "Frodo is a pretty good… Continue reading Make Failure Acceptable
What do you do when one of your peers at work does something cool, helpful, beneficial or just helps someone out? If you're like most employees in most workplaces, you'll probably say thanks if it impacted you directly and you were there at the time, but what about situations where you're not there, or where… Continue reading Supporting Peer-to-Peer Appreciation
Resource is the right term when dealing with a collection of interchangeable ‘things’ like stock, raw materials or money. It is not the right term when referring to talented and experienced members of staff.
Amongst the other names I had for this blog, one stood out in direct competition to ‘Managing Game Development’. ‘Leading Game Development’ After all, isn’t managing and management a ‘Bad Thing’ but leading and leadership a ‘Good Thing’? I’m sure we’ve all seen the following image (or a variation of) And we all know who… Continue reading Why Management (or “Why Not Leadership”)
Managing Game Development 