Read this classic blog and get yourself a festive treat.

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I love mince pies. FACT.

It was a day in late November, and I was catching the late train home after a long day in the office. I needed a drink, so I went to the food and drink place in St Pancras International. I asked for my coffee, and was offered a Mince Pie for an extra £1. Ooh that’s a good offer, I thought, so I said ‘Okay’.

Whilst sitting on the train I sipped my drink and devoured my Mince Pie. The coffee was good, but the mince pie was average at best. Especially for a £1, I thought. Perhaps it wasn't such a good deal!

So I posted a picture of my pie to our Slack channel, and jokingly gave it a score of 6 out of 10. Our Slack channel went berserk with ‘You’ve had a mince pie - why have you scored it?’ ‘OMG you scored it’ etc. And I thought, well yes, I have had a mince pie, and yes I have scored it... I wonder how others compare, and I wonder which one is best!

And that is where it all started.

Christmas is coming and Father Christmas is making those last minutes checks to see if you've been naughty or nice!  But what about your code?  Would it make it onto the nice list or has it been naughty this year?

The Santa Claus of Development is on the lookout for code with technical debt; lots and lots of technical debt. But how did we get here? We can all identify technical debt and know that the chance of paying it back are slim, yet we carry on adding it.  No presents for this code 😔

Technical debt is "a concept in software development that reflects the implied cost of additional rework caused by choosing an easy (limited) solution now instead of using a better approach that would take longer." (Wikipedia)

Get a 10% discount on any training course booked in December 2020 or January 2021 - just use discount code FESTIVE10 when booking.

Transforming customer pain points into levers for change

The best products and services can only be designed around the basic needs, motivations and behaviours of your end users, and I can’t think of a simpler, more effective and engaging way to visualise a customer experience than the art of Customer Journey Mapping. 

So, if you embrace Agile Ways of Working, methods of Design Thinking or quite simply want to find an effective way to visualise a customer experience then Customer Journey Mapping is the tool for you!

Is Scrum Master a full-time job?

I have heard this question many times. People ask it because they limit the Scrum Master’s role to how Scrum mechanics work, and in the best cases to building teams based on some models. If you think like them, continue reading this article. It might help you to understand better the role of the Scrum Master over time.

While most of the people see the Scrum Values as separate values, I see them as complementary, and dependent on each other.

User stories are a common practice in Agile but what are they and why do we use them?  Read about my experience here, plus if you get to the end there is a useful story writing handout.

Discover the benefits of persona creation, download our Radtac Persona template and review our simple user guide to using personas.

A persona is an adaptable tool that can assist teams to gain greater insight into customer needs and motivations whilst validating design ideas and product market fit. They work really well in product development as they are quick to create and offer a great level of alignment for teams. In fact at Radtac we have developed a template that will allow you to create a persona with ease, helping your teams gain greater customer insight to ensure they are building the right-thing as well as the thing-right. At Radtac we are both method and framework non biased which is why we can see the value of persona creation regardless of whether you are adopting methods of Design Thinking or Agile ways of working. 

We are living and working in an ever more rapidly changing world, in this blog I will start to explore how organisations can do more with LeSS.

The SAFe Fellow achievement represents the highest level of mastery and leadership in the practice and principles of the Scaled Agile Framework® (SAFe®)