(My home improvements are nothing as ambitious as this photo!) For the last two weeks, I’ve had a bit of a break from blogging while moving into my new home. This week, I’d like to write about taking a backlog of work or ideas and getting them organised and ordered. …

I’m moving to a new flat on Monday, so I’m quite busy packing and preparing for the move. Instead of the usual blog post, this week I’d like to share some music I’ve written, which went up on streaming sites this morning. It’s an EP of six tracks, titled “Night…

One of the first things I learned in Scrum is the importance of a task being “Done”. In short, until something is done, you don’t get the value. Getting a task to “Done” might not be as simple as someone picking it up and doing it. Sometimes, it’s good for…

My first tech job was at a large insurance company, in an IT department of 60 people. I started as a trainee developer, and slowly started learning software development. After a number of years, I noticed an internal vacancy for a test manager*. I remember reading the job spec and…

A simple Kanban board has 3 columns: To do, In progress, Done. Tasks in To Do haven’t been picked up yet; In progress shows tasks that are being worked on; Done contains the tasks that have been completed. If you’re not careful, the “in progress” column can get overwhelming. Here…

Software estimates are hard. Even with deep knowledge of the technologies being used, not to mention the system you’re working on, we’ve all run into issues we didn’t see coming. And when it’s plain sailing, what if you get interrupted — or asked to do something else before you’re ready? …

A team’s Agile board contains all of their work. It should be possible to look at the board to get a sense of what’s happening, such as the status of tasks, who’s working on what, and what’s been completed so far. If the board is the master source for keeping…

Back in 2009, I moved back to the UK after a couple of years in Australia, and I was looking for web developer jobs in London. Not wanting to hang around, I uploaded my CV to a tech jobs site, included my contact details, and told recruiters I was looking…

I often think of things I’d like to do more consistently. Reading. Writing. Coding. Making music. All things I do from time to time, but I tend to do a lot of them in bursts — and then not again for a while. Throw in gaming and watching TV shows…