AGILE TRAINING ~ CONSULTANCY ~ COACHING

One of the things I can't over emphasise enough when coaching agile techniques or working with a team is the importance of keeping everything 'real' and 'physical' I'm an enormous fan of the  'Information Radiator'  despite being accused numerous times of being a 'bit old school' and once told by a manager that a task board didn't reflect well on an IT department! A task board is a brilliant way of being visible and visibility helps to encourage collaboration and trust. Writing stories on index cards or post-it notes is the start to working collaboratively - you can touch and feel the story... pass it around sequence them on a board as a team and discuss each story - it's something that just doesn't happen when using a computer based system. If I'm being really honest - I secretly wonder if teams who don't use a physical task board are really all that agile or just scrum-buts! That might sound a bit far stret...

OK, this article might seem a bit strange when compared with the usual mix of loosely IT related stories you'll find on this site but I'm a very big MX5 fan, I've owned several over the last decade - The MX5 is the perfect plucky British sport's car, rear wheel drive, front-engine, perfect 50/50 handling, not a super-car by any means but perfect  for throwing around country lanes, top-down on those barmy summer evenings.... even if they are actually built in Hiroshima. In the winter in snow and ice however - rear wheel drive and weighing roughly the same as Keira Knightley does make for rather interesting driving! which is why for years I've always switched to Winter tyres between November and March (as instructed to do so in the owners manual!) So what are winter tyres and do they really work.... to be honest 'Winter tyre' is bit of a generic term, The tyres I use in the winter are mud and sand tyres with the snow flake symbol. They contain much mor...