Author Archives: Liz

On Epiphany and Apophany

Posted on September 9, 2015 by Liz

We probe, then sense, then respond. If you’re familiar with Cynefin, you know that we categorize the obvious, analyze the complicated, probe the complex and act in chaos. You might also know that those approaches to the different domains come … Continue reading →

Posted in cynefin, real options, uncertainty | 9 Comments

Negative Scenarios in BDD

Posted on June 19, 2015 by Liz

One problem I hear repeatedly from people is that they can’t find a good place to start talking about scenarios. An easy trick is to find the person who fought to get the budget for the project (the primary stakeholder) … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 3 Comments

140 is the new 17

Posted on June 6, 2015 by Liz

I took a break from Twitter. A while back, I ran a series of talks on Respect for People. I talked about systems which encourage respect being those which are constrained or focused, transparent, and forgiving. I also outlined one … Continue reading →

Posted in life | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

The Estimates in #NoEstimates

Posted on May 1, 2015 by Liz

A couple of weeks ago, I tweeted a paraphrase of something that David J. Anderson said at the London Lean Kanban Day: “Probabalistic forecasting will outperform estimation every time”. I added the conference hashtag, and, perhaps most controversially, the #NoEstimates one. … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, conference | 37 Comments

A Dreyfus model for Agile adoption

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Liz

A couple of people have asked for this recently, so just posting it here to get it under the CC licence. It was written a while ago, and there are better maturity models out there, but I still find this … Continue reading →

Posted in learning models | 5 Comments

What is BDD?

Posted on March 27, 2015 by Liz

At #CukeUp today, there’s going to be a panel on defining BDD, again. BDD is hard to define, for good reason. First, because to do so would be to say “This is BDD” and “This is not BDD”. When you’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd, conference | 9 Comments

The Shallow Dive into Chaos

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Liz

For more on the Chaotic domain and subdomains, read Dave Snowden’s blog post, “…to give birth to a dancing star.” The relationship between separating people that I talk about here, and the Chaotic domain, can be seen in Cynthia Kurtz’s work with … Continue reading →

Posted in complexity, cynefin | 3 Comments

A Stakeholder goes to St. Ives

Posted on February 28, 2015 by Liz

As I was trying to resolve my problem, I met a portfolio team with seven programmes of work. Each programme had seven projects; Each project had seven features; Each feature had seven stories; Each story had seven scenarios. How many things did I need … Continue reading →

Posted in business value | 7 Comments

Using Scenarios for Experiment Design

Posted on January 27, 2015 by Liz

In the complex domain, cause and effect are only correlated in retrospect, and we cannot predict outcomes. We can see them and understand them in retrospect, but the complex domain is the domain of discovery and innovation. Expect the unexpected! … Continue reading →

Posted in cynefin, evil hat, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

A Little Tense

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Liz

Following on from my last blog post about deriving Gherkin from conversations, I wanted to share some tips on tenses. This is beginner stuff, but it turns out there are a lot of beginners out there! It also isn’t gospel, … Continue reading →

Posted in bdd | 2 Comments