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Implementing Agile – Part III – Slicing Stories
This is the piece of the puzzle I couldn’t figure out by myself. I needed to see it in action, implemented well, to understand what I was missing. I’ve seen a lot of stories sliced wrong, and some sliced well. Slicing stories properly can be the difference between a high performance team, and one floundering.…
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Implementing Agile – Part II – WIP
The first big “Agile” change I implemented was standup. Without it you can’t even begin to know what’s going on in your team, let alone help accomplish all it needs. But all standup is, is a daily window into what everyone is doing. That helps you know what’s going on, on a day-to-day bases. But…
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Implementing Agile – Part I – Standup
Early on as a manager, I came across Agile methodologies, but wasn’t able to get training in it, so I had to figure out how to implement it myself. After reading countless books and immersing myself in whatever I could find online, I was able to implement several key elements. But I still was missing…
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Make Yourself Dispensable
Originally published on forbes.com. “If you want to keep your job, you have to make yourself indispensable.” I’m sure you’ve heard that before. Here’s the truth – you will never get great work done if you are indispensable. If your tech company relies upon you so much that if you were hit by a bus the…
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Developers Are Lazy, And That’s A Good Thing
Originally published on forbes.com. I’m lazy, and most great developers I know are lazy too. I would much rather spend a day developing an import script to import 2,000-3,000 pieces of content than spend that day manually importing that content. Sure, I could put on a podcast or book in the background while I manually…
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Some Thoughts on Cryptocurrencies
Update, March 16, 2018 Currently the bitcoin energy consumption is ridiculous, and so much more so the entire cryptocurrency space. This is a know issue, that is being dealt with. But here’s the thing. I won’t buy a gas-guzzling car, I won’t invest in oil stocks, I turn my lights out when I’m not using…
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9×12 – A Weekly Book Project Gone Rogue
It has not been an easy year. I think November 2016 hit a lot of us like a ton of bricks. I personally had been listening to every political podcast I could get my hands on leading up to the election – like it might make some difference. This year I had to step away.…
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Announcing the new ISDA.org
I’m the Director of Web Development at ISDA, a trade organization whose goal is to make the global derivatives markets safer and more efficient. I started there a little over 6 years ago, just after they had launched a new site. The design was contemporary for its time. The codebase was built on top of…
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Play To Your Strengths (The Leader’s Serenity Prayer)
Originally published on forbes.com. The role of stretching is often overlooked in the process of growth. When you’re strength training and you lift weights, it stresses your muscles, which triggers the growth process. But if you neglect to stretch afterward, your muscles shorten and become tight, which leads to them becoming weaker, not stronger, and…
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[Video] It’s broke: how do I fix it? Debugging your code in WordPress
Back in April I gave a talk at WPNYC about debugging. Enjoy!