Notes from YOW! 2014: Jeff Patton on ‘User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

Jeff Patton (@jeffpatton) was billed to present a “fast paced workshop [where] you’ll learn the concepts of story mapping by building a map collaboratively with others”. He shared lots of great insights about stories but (I felt) really only touched on Story Mapping briefly near the end of the time. Still, I collected some good notes about stories that made me re-think a few things…

He started by showing this great list of wrong things he used to think about stories. Stupid stuff Jeff Patton used to belive about Agile stories Continue reading

Notes from YOW! 2014: Jez Humble on ‘The Lean Enterprise’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

A man in a suit, who probably works for an enterprise, running in a marathon and looking very agileJez Humble (@jezhumble), co-author of ‘Continuous Delivery’, spoke on The Lean Enterprise, specifically “the principles that enable rapid, software-driven innovation at scale” and how to transform organisations. (Slides)

He briefly covered the three horizons method of innovation and highlighted that you actually need to plan and be executing on all 3 at any one time. They also need separate management styles and reporting lines so that they don’t try to squash each other in departmental trade-offs or management bunfights. The two management styles are explore (discover new stuff) and exploit (capitalise on existing assets). Continue reading

The Top UX Trends of 2014 (Condensed)

I just read this nice post on ‘The Top UX Trends of 2014‘ on UXMag.com. It had some useful observations, but was a bit long, so I’ve written up a summary…

Integration of social media into business practice (not just marketing) has become a necessity.

Large companies are realising the importance of user-centred development and are building in-house UX teams. Continue reading

Notes from YOW! 2014: Martin Thompson and Todd L. Montgomery on ‘How Did We End Up Here?’

I attended YOW! Sydney 2014 and thought some people might get something useful out of my notes. These aren’t my complete reinterpretations of every slide, but just things I jotted down that I thought were interesting enough to remember or look into further.

Cows standing in front of a burning barn.Martin Thompson (@mjpt777) and Todd L. Montgomery (@toddlmontgomery) discussed the state of the software industry at YOW! 2014, including “barbequing” a whole herd of sacred cows. (Slides)

A Dr Dobbs 2010 report into IT project success showed a correlation between higher numbers of people on a project and higher rates of failure. Even the best performing methodologies still have >10% failure. Continue reading