Articles for category: Drive

February 23, 2022

Greg Thomas

Determining Sprint Capacity

As easy as it would be, Sprint Capacity isn’t all about numbers.  The numbers are the foundation to build a capacity but they aren’t the entire story.  If you’re being asked to determine your team’s capacity, there are a number of factors you should be considering. Some factors I consider when looking at how I want to manage a sprint and what I think of when determining the capacity of the team; How many stories are allocated to each developer to each sprint and what are they in particular? I.e., a developer could have 3 – 4 user stories a sprint,

February 21, 2022

Greg Thomas

The Job you Don’t Know Exists… Yet!

You might be applying for a Junior, Intermediate, Senior Developer job, or maybe a Tech Lead – who knows – but in the back of my head, I’m evaluating you for a job that doesn’t exist yet. When you’re hiring someone you’re presumably doing it because your team is growing. Maybe your role has expanded, your project is growing, your product is doing well in the field, whatever the reason, there is an element of growth behind it – you need more awesome people to meet that growth. As someone close to the problems, you are probably thinking further out

February 17, 2022

Greg Thomas

The Least Connections

We don’t count the least connections. We should because the ones with the least connections are the ones that have the most value. Because we have time to cultivate and grow each one. The more you, the harder it becomes to maintain that same level of touch and value when we had the least of them.

February 16, 2022

Greg Thomas

Not Another Subscription

Everything is a subscription, we don’t buy it outright, we get dinged every day, week, month, and year based on our usage.  And if we don’t use it enough there are base fees to “keep the lights on”. Not everything needs a subscription, not everything needs an account, a login, or a profile that does everything except cancel it. I don’t pay a subscription fee for my shoes and they are doing just fine. If you are charging a subscription fee, make sure you are making that fee worthwhile, otherwise, sell me on creating another profile.

February 11, 2022

Greg Thomas

Sprinting Software

The concept of sprints was never anything new. Don’t take on a lot of work, do in small bits so you can show progress and keep your work cycles short.  We then bundle it up with a bow by showing to the people who are paying us what it is that we’ve built, get feedback, make changes, and move forward. We’ve been living this life for years – it’s called a ToDo list – and every app that is geared towards ToDo lists might as well be called Sprints. Granted we have a little more to undertake in Software, but the