What now?

The risk with direct questions

, , , , , , ,
The risk with the direct question is that the person being asked could assume intent within the question. E.g. asking what risk there in this release could be assumed that you think there is a risk in the release or that you don’t trust the…

What are your default settings?

, , , ,
What are the defaults that we use when thinking and how do they affect our analysis of situations and decisions
Fire extinguisher by Piotr Chrobot

Why is psychological safety important to software engineering teams?

, , , , ,
4 minute read Before you can answer this question you need to know what psychological safety is. Amy Edmondson in her book The Fearless Organisation describes it as:  The belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal…
3 vintage telephone on the wall Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

Three things of 2020

, , , , , ,
3 minute read Below are three things that when I reflect back on 2020 that stand out to me. I’ve purposely not mentioned COVID because I think this is one thing that all of us would have on our list so didn't think there was anything…

Foundations of great teams? Start with relationships

, , , , ,
4 mins reading time tl;dr: check out my miro model to get the key points. Good informal relationships are they key to better collaboration https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_khGWgWc=/ Over the last couple of years I've started to see…
Picture of a takeaways at night in Margate

My biggest takeaways from AgileTD 2020: The future of testers isn’t in automation or testing

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,
I was lucky enough to speak at AgileTD this year and also attend some of the talks. These are my main takeaways from the conference based on the talks that I was able to make. My confirmation bias sense is tingling with this but…   The…
Mindmap of SCRAF model

Why do we respond the way we do in social situations?

, , , ,
A colleague recently shared an article with me called Managing with the brain in mind. It argues that the workplace is experienced by employees as social structure first then a workplace and that keeping this mind might lead to better employee…
broken blue ceramic plate

How to learn from failure

, , , ,
[Organisations] that catch, correct, and learn from failure before others do will succeed - Amy Edmundson
Tech wall at the design museum

Building Quality in via Testability

, , , , , ,
7 minute read Back in March 2018 I visited The Design Museum in London and came across the above installation. What you can see is technology design classics all the way from the first transistor radios on one side to the very first digital…