My Tweets

  • Was on stage tonight with my son for a #magic show (HE was performing in front of over 110). Went pretty well again. Am a proud dad! 2 weeks ago
  • About to finish writing my next lecture for Kingston University: "How Great People Can Kill Your Project" 2011-10-28
  • 1 anthropologist on radio about EU issues: "there is as much cultural difference between France and Germany than between France and Japan" 2011-09-28
  • CCP Hilmar's talk #ghconf about EVE's players behaviour comforted me in my Human Dynamics approach of projects. 2011-06-30
  • More updates...

Multicultural Thinking: the Develop Magazine article

Here is the content of the article I have published in Develop Magazine, issue #114 that you can read and download on the following links: Read online: http://issuu.com/develop/docs/dev114_web. PDF Download: http://www.develop-online.net/digital-edition. Look for the issue #114 in March 2011. The version in the Develop Magazine is obviously nicer to read with diagrams. The magazine is [...] [...]

Sample chapter of my first book available

You have surely noticed that I have been very quiet in the past year. It is because I was writing my first book. This has taken most of my writing energy. The topic is very close to what I am talking about here: human dynamics inside the context of a software project. I present a [...] [...]

Time for even better projects in the Games Industry

The UK government, in its attempt to save money (like almost all European government) has scrapped the Games industry tax relief. Clearly, the industry is in shock and the different interviews available online from people representing the Games are using words such as betrayal. It is not for me to judge. Britain’s studios have produced [...] [...]

Are you a positive rule breaker?

In order to innovate, you first have to master the rules very well. [...]

Where on earth will we outsource off-shore?

As we all know, outsourcing off-shore is a complex decision to make for a company. The reasons for doing so are generally cost saving of course, but also the hope to get the development happen faster due to a bigger and more readily available team. When you have at last made the decision to do [...] [...]

Please sign here!

“Please sign here!” Every time I hear that sentence I am worried about what I am doing. And every time I am in the same situation: I have to sign to move forward but I am leaving part of my freedom away. This is true when you get a mortgage or a credit, when you [...] [...]

Off-shore development: why can’t “they” get it?

What is culture and what does it mean to be a foreigner? Don’t worry; I will not give a detailed answer to these two questions; that would need 100s of pages to do so. These 2 questions, I had to ask them to myself when I married a foreigner and when I moved to live [...] [...]

“I’m going to kill you!”

John von Neumann, the “father” of computers as they are now, has said: There’s no point in being exact about something if you don’t even know what you’re talking about. I like that quote and I’ll tell you why. I have delivered again and again courses about requirements management and requirements gathering. There is no [...] [...]

Iteration size and the tap water glass

When I teach iterative approach in software development, I use to justify it with an analogy that I have borrowed from Kent Beck: managing software is like driving a car; you permanently need to adjust left and right if you don’t want to have an accident. That’s a fine analogy and it always worked for [...] [...]

Open Space and Mates’ Mere Presence

Who in the software industry has not worked in one of these huge open-spaces readily available in many workplaces? Those who have not can probably consider themselves as the exception. Those who have, probably wonder where on earth this idea of putting dozens and dozens of people in the same room to produce software, come [...] [...]