cathycarleton.com

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Us vs. Them

cathy — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 11:39:57 +0000

“Don’t involve them, they will just bog things down.”
“Stay under the radar with this project or they will try to hijack it.”
“All they do is whine, don’t bother give them sign-off approval.”
“We must avoid their involvement or it will never get done.”

Agile Humor – New Certifications

cathy — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 18:01:39 +0000

The brilliant Peter Saddington, a/k/a AgileScout, posted a wickedly funny April 1st announcement of a Certified Agile Blogger course. Yep, April Fool! Read it, it’s great fun.

Since I blog about Agile from the point of view of the business stakeholders, it got me thinking about other certifications we could use in the Agile community.

Agile Humor – Agile Similes

cathy — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 03:42:39 +0000

Lean requirements are like those crinkly silver space blankets. They’ll do the job, but they don’t look like they will.

The word Agile is like the word Socialism. Many of the people throwing it around these days don’t really understand what it means.

A Marketers Guide to Agile Development – Open Office Configurations Are Great – for Programmers.

cathy — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 01:43:45 +0000

You can buy the Herman Miller modular furniture with the low partitions. And you can intermix the Marketing team in with the Dev team in those new ergonomi-pods. Before you do, it’s a good idea to do some research about how the two teams spend their workdays.

Agile Humor – Evidence That Downton Abbey is an Agile Shop

cathy — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 01:32:17 +0000

The Dowager Countess regards the telephone as an instrument of torture, too.

Even if all hell’s breaking loose, the dinner release deploys promptly at eight.

The gown Lady Sybil puts on before coming down to breakfast is only the first iteration.

A Marketer’s Guide to Agile Development – Fumbling In the End Zone

cathy — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:57:15 +0000

Some Agile Marketing projects will wither and die. Oh, they get finished – they just won’t be used. Why?

A SOLO RUN DOWN THE FIELD

Sometimes a developer or team unilaterally decides Marketing’s had enough turns, it’s their turn – they’ll build their own vision. Seriously, I’ve seen it happen. Maybe it really is a great idea and Marketing just won’t green-light it. Maybe the two teams aren’t getting along. Whatever. The point is that deliberately skipping collaboration can allow departmental myopia to take over. It works out occasionally, if there’s a serious UX wonk behind the keyboard. But more often, a tech-only result favors the technical accomplishment – the user CAN complete their task – but the process is so annoying that users want to kick holes in their monitors doing it. And if the style and nav are to the specs of someone’s vision of cool, unmoored from the brand’s, users can bail thinking they’re on the wrong site.

A Marketer’s Guide To Agile Development – When a Turf War Is Justified

cathy — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 04:51:09 +0000

Marketing and Technology both play for the same team – the organization that employs them. Turf wars between the two departments sap efficiency and impede progress. Turf wars are bad. Turf wars should be avoided. Except in the rare cases when they need to be fought. When’s that?

Agile Humor – What Your PM Really Means

cathy — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 05:15:14 +0000

Your Project Manager is probably very polite. Maybe too polite…

Happy New Year!

cathy — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 01:22:30 +0000

Holidays bring salutations.
Agile process brings iterations.
Wishing you New Years Day felicitations,
Sans headaches from excess libations!

Cheers!
Cathy

Agile Humor – There Goes That Damn Lightbulb Again…

cathy — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 03:31:42 +0000

How many CTO’s does it take to change a lightbulb?

Two. One to screw in a new lightbulb and the other to retroactively declare it a planned outage.

How many help desk engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?