It’s easy to blame someone that is not present. We usually see that between departments like product and support, or even between cross-functional teams not interacting much together. Blame is a defensive mechanism that activates itself when a human feels threatened himself, or his social group, as a way to…

We have to test in production. While some testing must be done in non-production environments, other tests are only valuable when performed in production. One critical test for teams aiming to deliver Quality at Speed software is to measure the value of their software increments, directly with their users. But…

Users are ultimate judges of valuable software. Whatever the technology or who’s behind the software, failing to meet the users expectations result in a loss of demand. Confronting ourselves to the reality of our users seems like evidence, but it is a practice too often disregarded by software teams. Customer…

Out of sight, out of mind. Forgetting what is out of sight was quite useful when living in the forest, hunting for food, but things are different now. Organizations depend on Quality at Speed software to survive in the digital ecosystem, and forgetting important software activities impact quality and speed. …

An external piece of eyes is always helpful. And when these eyes are from a peer able to improve the quality and speed of our deliverables, it is even more interesting. Peer reviews are an effective practice popularized in software with methodologies such as agile and extreme programming. One difficulty…

Time is a powerful constraint. It forces us to define what matters most, make choices of priorities, and leave behind less valuable activities. Time becomes a more powerful constraint with the acceleration of the digital competition and innovation with organizations requiring Quality at Speed software to change on time. But…

Delivering a new application can be stressful. The build can fail with complex messages, deployment stuck, without talking about firewalls and security issues. And problems become harder when other people must be involved. These issues leave software engineers with a set of fears in delivering software, attracting them into their…

Confidence builds up with feedback. Teams accelerating their software delivery equally need feedback along the software lifecycle to balance quality and speed. The challenge is to effectively balance risks to detect defects as early as possible to rapidly adapt, without compromising the iteration speed. That equilibrium requires an adaptative approach…

Spoken words fly away, writings remain. That’s equally true when building software. Teams have so much to do and think about, ending up by forgetting important tasks. Tasks written that are regularly reviewed have a much better probability of being completed, raising the question of how to identify such tasks…