Failure is not usually something organisations want to talk about.
We prefer words like delivery, progress, efficiency and success. Those are good things. But in Agile work, some of the most important learning comes from small failures that happen early enough to do something about them.
The key is not to avoid failure completely.
The key is to make failure safe enough, small enough and visible enough that the team can learn from it.
Continue reading What teams taught me by failing safely
I’m delighted to say that my new book, What kind of problem is this?, is now available to buy from Lulu.
The full title is What kind of problem is this? A Scrum Master’s field guide to using Cynefin in real team situations.
It is a practical book for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, Product Owners, delivery leaders and anyone who works with Scrum but has sometimes wondered why the same practices work beautifully in one situation and fall flat in another.
Continue reading My new book is available: What kind of problem is this?Agile is often described as a way to deliver work faster.
That is not wrong, but it is incomplete.
At its best, Agile is not simply a delivery framework. It is a learning system. It helps teams discover what is true, what is valuable, what is possible and what needs to change.
Continue reading Agile as a learning system, not a delivery framework
Recently, I’ve been hearing a lot of people complaining how bad Microsoft Windows 11 is.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been lurking in a lot more Linux forums recently. Or because of the social media and YouTube channels I subscribe to. Or maybe it really is a true reflection of what people are generally thinking about Windows 11, both computer geeks and ordinary users alike.
“It’s not that bad!” I thought to myself.
Until last week when I set up a new user account on my Windows 11 laptop and within minutes thought, “What on earth is this?!”
It was then that I realised that for both my Windows desktop and laptop PCs, I’ve insulated myself against most of the Windows 11 quirks that many folks have been complaining about:
I’ve tweaked things enough that most of Windows 11 now feels much like Windows 10. (Even if its deeper dialogs and settings feel like a ghetto, with designs going back to Windows 95 or earlier.)
For anyone who wants to reclaim a bit of sanity, here’s what I do when I set up a new Windows 11 install.
Continue reading Taming Windows 11: how I stripped the adverts, bloat and Copilot
We are all accustomed to regular privacy scares online.
We know our web browsers track our history, social media apps build advertising profiles based on our clicks, and smart speakers listen out for wake words.
But last week, I stumbled across a post on Instagram that claimed that smart TVs are quietly taking screenshots of our displays every few seconds — even when the television is simply being used as a computer monitor.
Continue reading Is your smart TV spying on you?
