I’ve been spending the past few days working in Cupertino in the heart of Silicon Valley.  As I look out my hotel room window, I can see below me the headquarters of Apple and Symantec.  This evening, I took a short drive to see the headquarters of Adobe, Google, HP, Intel, Yahoo and a few others (OK, I was bored and a little geeked out by being here).  Spending time at the epicenter of the tech community had me asking the question, “If agile has really gone mainstream, how many of these tech companies are using agile practices, and if they are using agile, how are they doing?” When I got back to my hotel room, I Googled “agile adoption rates” and came across a survey that Scott Ambler did in March 2007 about the rate of agile adoption.  Scott received 781 responses to his interview and published his findings on his website and in Dr. Dobb’s.  According to Scott, his key findings were:  Read the rest of this post

While I was flying out to San Jose this afternoon, I was re-reading Garr Reynolds’ new book Presentation Zen.  If you haven’t read this book yet, run and out and get it now.  It is the antidote to death by PowerPoint.  One thought that struck me for a second time in Garr’s book is the idea of the “beginner’s mind” or the child’s mind.  The beginner’s mind is a concept that comes to us from Zen teachings that, according to Garr, says “like a child, one who approaches life with a beginner’s mind is fresh, enthusiastic, and open to the vast possibilities of ideas and solutions before them”.  Garr goes on to expound that “when you approach a new challenge as a true beginner (even if you’re a seasoned adult), you need not be saddled with fear of failure or of making mistakes.”  Read the rest of this post

I was watching an old movie last night that I think is hysterical called “What About Bob?” starring Richard Dreyfus and Bill Murray.  Bill Murray plays a guy with tons of phobias.  Richard Dreyfus plays his doctor who is teaching him about taking baby steps to overcome his fears.  Bill Murray has one particular phobia about riding in elevators.  At one point in the movie, he decides to finally try getting on an elevator and says “Baby steps onto the elevator…baby steps into the elevator…I’m in the elevator” (the doors close) “HELLLLLLLLLLP!!!!!”.  Read the rest of this post

I recently came across a quote from one of my favorite authors, Pearl S. Buck.  She said:

“One faces the future with one’s past.”

Short, sweet and to the point.  The quote really struck a chord with me because our development team recently learned this lesson the agile way.  Last Friday, we completed the second iteration of an enterprise GIS development project and conducted a sprint review with our client.  To our dismay, we seemed to have been off the mark in terms of what the client was expecting.  The client seemed disappointed and our team was as well.  Read the rest of this post