I recently wrote about "digitally blind products", and this got me thinking about features. Apparently Google returns a pretty decent definition of a feature, " specific function or characteristic that enhances your product's value". I like this definition because it places some emphasis on product value, without mentioning what value is or for whom. Thus a feature is about adding value, yet it is unspecified for whom. Usually "feature factory" style development favors features stated to benefit the end user, the external client, the one user who pays for the product.

Christmas & New Year break is a quiet time and unsurprisingly this causes some introspection. I have been involved in software delivery and subsequently all things agile for some time and I even organize events on this (see Agile Coach Camp Romania). First realization is that my professional path has started from delivery & quality, and has taken me to agile practices. I do now realize that focus is too much on rituals and following some rules. Rituals are good, but rituals that have effect are even better. So, I do now realize that first me, or we (team) need to delivery, achieve impact, and then create a ritual around that success.

My kids at school have some sort of tradition, before the winter holidays visiting a bookstore and picking up two books. One book is for them, and the other one is intended as a gift for their parents. For me it's a nice habit, supporting the reading habit. This year, I received a book that surprised me. My younger son picked up "Bushido: The Soul of Japan", written by Inazo Nitobe and published in 1899. It was a pleasant reading, and there are two things I want to share about it.

Around autumn and early winter organizations experience some intense periods. It is a time of planning, forecasting, dreaming, imagining, estimating. It the time when next year aspirations take shape. To make this credible and easy, usually a baseline is established. And unsurprisingly this baseline is often the "current" level measurements. At the same time organizations point to some uncomfortable questions, like "Do we know about our digital flows, in terms of use behavior?".

A personal reflection on the evolution of Agile practices, noting the shift from innovation to widespread adoption, and emphasizes the need for grit and wisdom as the field matures and practices become mainstream.

This might or might not age well..#AI is entering organisations and people start using it. Everyone is excited and hoping all the analysis for IT solutions implementation will no longer be needed, and results will materialize sooner, with less testing and less work woth IT. Yet, soon we discover that predictable results need adequate prompting, and fast we learn about system prompts and RAG and others alike.

We constantly seek to add more, but true improvement involves noticing what we leave out. Negative space highlights untouched areas, helping us consciously assess priorities and opportunities for growth.

There are more than 15 years for me working with teams, helping them become better at reaching their goals, delivering more impact and being happier overall. Some call it agile, but I like to think of it just like "do work better".  I started myself to learn about this while working in software testing, attempting to test better, to understand how to build a set of heuristics for consistent problem exploration.

"Man acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man" - Martin Heidegger "The limits of my language means the limits of my world" - Ludwig Wittgenstein Some time ago I've become student for an online course I wish I've taken on earlier, the Cynefin Foundations one. Even from the first chapter, the course designer's (among them being one person I highly regard, Dave Snowden) places a big emphasis on language and its importance when learning.

AI might be the best companion for humans, helping us build a strong attention skill. So, in the end, the question relies around what AI will enhance in humans. Will AI make us more focused or it will take us further in the attention drift?

We often believe someone else—smarter or more capable—will fix problems, but it’s up to us. Delegation can be downward, upward, or, most sneakily, to our future selves, fueling procrastination. #selfleadership #procrastination

Some time ago I attended Romania's first Agile Coach Camp edition. It was refreshing and nice to meet people eager to come open with their daily problems, trusting the group, while seeking useful insights and advices that would otherwise be hard to get.  One of the open space sessions that grabbed my attention was about risk management while working with an Agile mindset in a highly regulated and restrictive environment (in this case investment banking). 

I have been an actor in and around teams working based on Agile principles for many years by now. There seems to be a recurring question that I have got many times from people new to this way of working. As one of the basic traits of a team working within Agile principles is TRANSPARENCY, every work item should be visible.

I have kids and I love them! As they grow, I learn along the way various steps and stages of learning & development. It is no wonder that they say "you grow once more as your kids grow"... One of the recent realization has to do with something many of us take for granted and consider ubiquitous, that is reading and operating an analogue clock.

Today on a Slack group I really enjoy I found someone doing some research on content reach and content mechanics. As usual, there was a form to be filled in. Most questions were good, some made me revisit habits and some triggered me to write this post. The person behind the effort was clearly enthusiastic and willing to make something happen.

The type of work should determine how one's day of work looks like. There are fields where focused work is productive work, and there are fields where relational and networking work is productive work. Managers fall mostly in the second category. By their position, as interface elements in the organization they are supposed communicate and work more with other people to produce decisions and steer the makers.

Failure in complex systems is, like other types of behavior in such systems, emergent Perrow's model is a good example. In a recent project I realized that testing can act as a canary, as early test results indicate things are going not in the right direction. The project manager, was asking why these defects were raised during a team meeting as being important, and one of the more experienced testers mentioned that this is a smell of something not being done properly, that will fail down the line.

Richard Bradshaw (@FriendlyTester) Tweeted: Testers are so quick to negatively critique without a providing a single hint of positivity.  This felt so close to my heart and also knowing Richard personally I believe he also sees this as a sad part of the software tester role. I also believe positivity can be evolved, and my recent life events make me believe strongly in this.

Building on my previous post—“Return to office” or how one spring does not get in the box by itself…—I want to reflect on the current struggles organizations face as they attempt to bring employees back to the office in this latest phase of the post-pandemic era. I am not aiming to take sides. It’s clear that every approach—whether pushing for a rapid return, opting for flexibility, or supporting permanent remote work—has compelling arguments behind it.

"avoidance of failure is a better strategy than imitation of success" Dave Snowden Many times we try to reach success by imitation, and that goal is pursued vigorously. This looks a lot like trying to behave like something that we or our organisation is not alike, with our assumptions being that imitating all the visible moves will provide the same results.