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	<title>Andy&#039;s Mind</title>
	<link>http://www.andybrandt.net</link>
	<description>A stream in the sea...</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 04 Jan 2012 11:32:04 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>CFO &#8211; Chief Fun Officer</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Software development is a very peculiar industry. If work is not fun for those doing it the products will be mediocre at best and so will be the company &#8211; it can make money but it will never be a great company attracting talented people. This is so because software development is not really engineering [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/720/cfo-chief-fun-officer</link>
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		<title>An interesting experience in servant leadership</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I have been leading a two day workshop a couple of months ago and it was an interesting experience in servant leadership that I can now share. The workshop was about the overall systems architecture at the company I was working with at the time. My mission there was transforming their IT department into an [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/705/an-interesting-experience-in-servant-leadership</link>
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		<title>One cert to rule them all</title>
		<description><![CDATA[What I suspected for a long time will happen just did: PMI has announced its agile certificate. This is a significant development for many reasons. First of all it officially confirms agile&#8217;s position amongst respected management methods &#8211; as part of the mainstream. I wrote about it at length recently, so I&#8217;ll just point out [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/684/one-cert-to-rule-them-all</link>
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		<title>The Future of Agile</title>
		<description><![CDATA[With 2010 ending soon it is a good moment to think about the future of agile. First &#8211; lets define it: agile is a set of principles, methods and practices that emphasise short turnaround times, high flexibility (also as a way of dealing with risk through adaptation), focus on quality and teams. Agile has been [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/675/future-of-agile</link>
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		<title>Three things I don&#8217;t like in the agile community</title>
		<description><![CDATA[1. Dogmatism Agile is about adaptive, creative approach to complex work yet amazingly average agilists are the most dogmatic people I know. If you read their blogs and follow their tweets you will soon see dogmas being proclaimed and anathemas being cast on heretics who don&#8217;t agree. The irony is that those dogmas can be [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/669/three-things-i-dont-like-in-the-agile-community</link>
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		<title>Is Agile for everyone?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Almost three years ago at the Agile Development Practices conference Mary Poppendieck took the stage and announced to the assembled agilists that Agile has become mainstream. It was met with applause. This moment reflects very well the mood of those involved in the agile movement back then. Everyone was sure that agile approach and practices [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/653/is-agile-for-everyone</link>
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		<title>Choosing a webinar platform</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In July I decided to start using webinars to interact with the users of our Scrum tool &#8211; the Banana Scrum. I also started to use webinars to broadcast seminars of the Polish Scrum Group. Obviously, I needed a webinar solution to do this. Choosing which one of the many webinar/web meeting platforms available to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/634/choosing-a-webinar-platform</link>
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		<title>Enjoying &#8220;Priority Inbox&#8221;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[About a week ago I was looking at my screen in the morning and wondering how to improve how I handle my e-mail. My key problem was lots of mail that is not spam but is also not real e-mail nor something I want to read every day – stuff like LinkedIn notifications, discussion groups, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/645/enjoying-priority-inbox</link>
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		<title>Great video about motivation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I just found a great video about motivation that explains why self-organization works better. I think this neatly shows why the very term &#8220;human resources&#8221; which implies treating humans just like any other machine in a company&#8217;s inventory is not only unethical and repugnant, but also simply wrong.]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/639/great-video-about-motivation</link>
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		<title>To release or not to release?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A question I frequently see asked on the Internet is whether agile teams should release every iteration (or even more frequently) or not. When asked in relation to Scrum the question is usually if software should be released every sprint. With other methods &#8211; like now-popular Kanban &#8211; the question is what release frequency would [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/637/to-release-or-not-to-release</link>
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		<title>Google kills Wave</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A friend sent me a link to a posting on the official Google blog that says they are effectively killing Wave. The reason given is lack of user adoption. I think what it shows is rather Google&#8217;s failure to properly position the product on the market &#8211; or even turn the technology they have developed [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/628/google-kills-wave</link>
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		<title>Sprint retrospective vs. Sprint review</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone has asked if management or project management should come to the sprint retrospective 1. Think the way this question was asked indicated that there was some confusion regarding sprint retrospectives versus sprint reviews which, I think, is worth clearing. Sprint retrospective and Sprint review are two different things that shouldn&#8217;t be confused. Sprint review [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/623/sprint-retrospective-vs-sprint-review</link>
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		<title>Oath of Non-Allegiance</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Jesse Fewell – a long time proponent of building bridges between the world of traditional project management and agile – has brought to my attention the newest initiative by Alistair Cockburn &#8211; “The Oath of Non-Allegiance”: I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/621/oath-of-non-allegiance</link>
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		<title>Selecting candidates for the Scrum Alliance board</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As some of you may know I have been on a committee led by Harvey Wheaton, that was tasked with selecting the candidates for the two vacant seats on the Scrum Alliance’s board. I was pretty surprised with the proposal to be a part of this group given some of my views, mostly about CST [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/619/selecting-candidates-for-the-scrum-alliance-board</link>
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		<title>Why iPad is evil</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Everyone knows the iPad &#8211; Apple&#8217;s newest toy, a crossover between an iPhone and a computer. It is nice, sleek, innovative and will sell like hot cakes (in fact, it already does). But there is one paradigm change it pushes that I find troubling: Apple&#8217;s software distribution system. Ever since &#8220;personal computers&#8221; (as they were [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/605/why-ipad-is-evil</link>
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		<title>Nigel Baker&#8217;s talk on Scrum</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here is Nigel Baker&#8216;s talk on Scrum &#8211; &#8220;10 things that Scrum Masters should know, but probably don&#8217;t&#8221; delivered on the &#8220;Agile Tuning&#8221; micro-conference here in Cracow last Saturday. Judging from blog posts by other participants Nigel&#8217;s talk was definitely a highlight of the conference &#8211; many wrote that other talks paled in comparison to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/609/nigel-bakers-talk-on-scrum</link>
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		<title>What&#8217;s wrong with Toyota fascination</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last Saturday I attended a mini-conference called Agile Tuning here in Cracow. Kanban was what was talked a lot about and there was the usual automotive reference: Toyota. There is a lot of fascination with Toyota in the agile community (and elsewhere) and it has always bothered me a bit, but I didn&#8217;t really understood [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/607/whats-wrong-with-toyota-fascination</link>
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		<title>The real danger for Scrum</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Scrum community is now debating &#8211; how Scrum Alliance and Ken Schwaber and certification programs and trainers and all kinds of related stuff will play out or should look like. In the meantime Scrum is in a real danger, which I don&#8217;t think is being noticed. This danger for Scrum and community that grew around [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/601/the-real-danger-for-scrum</link>
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		<title>Scrum politics as seen from afar</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ken Schwaber announced a new certification program, the Professional Scrum Master, and blogs/discussion groups are now full of posts about Scrum, Scrum Alliance and Ken. Some of the discussion is highly political and I feel some prospective from outside of the &#8220;club&#8221; is really due. Seen from where I live (Cracow, Poland) it looks like [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/588/scrum-politics-as-seen-from-afar</link>
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		<title>Overcomplexity</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone has sent me a link to a quite emotional but interesting article by Tim Bray on why the world of enterprise systems delivers so many failed projects and sucky software while the world of web startups excels at producing great software fast. Tim makes some very valid points about technology, culture and approach to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/576/overcomplexity</link>
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		<title>Brandt&#8217;s Law of NDAs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As agile software developers providing outsourcing services we are frequently asked to sign different NDAs and MNDAs. After over two years and dozens of NDAs I noticed a certain pattern which I will call &#8220;The Law of NDAs&#8221;. It goes like this: &#8220;The originality and value of the idea protected by an NDA is inversely [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/546/brandts-law-of-ndas</link>
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		<title>Scrum picture is quite right</title>
		<description><![CDATA[David Harvey wrote a piece on his blog entitled &#8220;The Scrum picture is wrong&#8221; where he says that the well known, canonical even, picture of Scrum loops errs by focusing too much on the product (deliverable, &#8220;potentially shippable product increment&#8221;) and forgetting that continuous improvement of the team is another important outcome of each sprint [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/533/scrum-picture-is-quite-right</link>
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		<title>Short sight?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Departing from my usual topics I want to share an observation on the big picture that we are being fed by politicians, mainstream media and most of the Internet. This big picture is &#8211; in short &#8211; that we humans are damaging the planet Earth, causing catastrophic global warming driven by CO2 emissions due to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/394/short-sight</link>
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		<title>Risk boomerang</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the the world of Scrum &#038; agile there is an ongoing discussion about contracts. Main problem is clash between agile approach of flexibility based on adaptation and the world of RFPs, RFIs and fixed contracts. I&#8217;ve seen many good talks and presentations about this, including also on the last Scrum Gathering. One thing I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/513/risk-boomerang</link>
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		<title>Scrum Gathering 2009: day three and final comments.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[To wrap up my coverage of the last Scrum Gathering in Munich a couple of words about the last day and then some general comments. After the lame keynote session on Tuesday I decided to sleep in on Wednesday and I missed Harvey Wheaton&#8216;s talk. It didn&#8217;t appear particularly interesting on the mini-agenda we were [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/506/scrum-gathering-2009-day-three-and-final-comments</link>
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		<title>Scrum Gathering day one and two</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Here are my short notes from Scrum Gathering. Overall this edition is slightly disappointing as compared to the last year&#8217;s. First the talks quality is a bit lower than in Stockholm. Or maybe I did end up in wrong ones because I didn&#8217;t choose well. Nothing besides the talks titles &#038; speaker names was announced [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/502/scrum-gathering-day-one-and-two</link>
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		<title>Obama Nobel Peace Prize&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So Obama did get the Nobel Peace Prize&#8230; Amazing! They could just as well give him the Nobel Prize in physics &#8211; after all, he didn&#8217;t do anything there too but just as well may make a groundbreaking discovery in the future. I think Nobel Peace Prize&#8217;s credibility is now completely gone as the committee [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/500/obama-nobel-peace-prize</link>
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		<title>Battles in the world of Scrum?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A lot is happening in the world of Scrum recently. Ken Schwaber departed Scrum Alliance abruptly, most probably after an internal conflict over the introduction of the CSM exam and he is starting something called Scrum.org. Scrum Alliance is now led by Tom Mellor &#8211; a guy mostly unknown in the European Scrum community. And [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/490/battles-in-the-world-of-scru</link>
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		<title>Ignorance strikes deeper</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Someone sent me a link to a recent Michael Shermer&#8217;s column on people believing in conspiracies &#8211; &#8220;Paranoia Strikes Deep&#8220;. An interesting article that reveals more about its author&#8217;s biases and limitations than its intended subjects. Basically, Mr. Shermer thinks that people who believe there may indeed exist some secret groups &#8211; especially within government [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/471/ignorance-strikes-deeper</link>
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		<title>Two ebook readers compared</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve had a chance to test two different eBook reader devices recently thanks to my friend, Paul Klipp. He is a fan of e-readers and has been trying to &#8220;convert&#8221; me for some time. Finally, he he gave me his two readers to try them out. I did get the FoxIt&#8217;s eSlick first and I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.andybrandt.net/464/two-ebook-readers-compared</link>
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