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Showing posts from October, 2013

doggie calculus

Richard Jones was CTO for a large retail company that relied heavily on e-commerce for most of its turnover. Aged 45, he’d been a software developer once and had risen through the ranks before reaching his current position. The responsibility of his position lay heavy on him but he took pride in the ability of his team and worried deeply when they weren’t performing. This was one of those days. Development speed had slowed to a crawl and the defect rate was through the roof. Every time they fixed one defect, they created at least two more. He’d talked to the team and he knew they were doing everything they could but it just wasn’t working. Richard knew they weren’t going to make their delivery date but he also knew he couldn’t talk to the board without a plan of action. A year or so ago, he’d engaged a coach to help the team improve their processes, which had a tremendous effect on the team’s performance and predictability. Was it time to and get the coach back? Fast-forward a couple o