Kelley Marsh

I make things better. I amuse myself in the meantime.

Author: Kelley

  • Product Maintenance

    Ah, product maintenance: Programmers: a short story (high quality: http://t.co/2H8JT49H23 ) pic.twitter.com/ewu6phQxb8 — badidea đŸȘ (@0xabad1dea) May 22, 2014 Working with talented people who are constantly learning is amazing. Thinking that every piece of code that is even slightly aged is incorrect or wrong is not as amazing. Compromise is a skill. And not one…

  • A well-oiled decision making machine

    I’m helping a buddy with his site, doing some analysis of the analytics to see what’s working and what isn’t, and to try to identify some places where he could bump up the site’s revenue a bit. The whole things feels quite luxurious. It’s a side project for him, and I’m just doing it for…

  • Is stress time over yet? I feel like it should be over now.

    I think we are defined by who we become in a crisis. When we are under stress, when things go wrong, when you’ve made a mistake, when the unexpected happens. Our reaction in times of trouble can be telling. Do you take action to fix things, or do you just talk about fixing things? Do…

  • Don’t be a silo

    I know this is a joke. An intended exaggeration. But it is frustrating nonetheless. Comic I made in honour of the dev's out there who struggle to context switch – (with thanks to XKCD) #standups #agile pic.twitter.com/f08C4sXOjJ — Brad Barrow (@foxwisp) May 13, 2014 As I was watching a show on Hulu last night, this…

  • Proactive, not reactive

    I keep a little note on my desk at work to remind me of the one thing I need to be above all else: Proactive – not reactive. This post was in my feed reader today, and I appreciate the message. Sometimes, we are so busy running around fixing the consequences of problems that we…

  • Finding, feeling, fixing friction

    Without my intent, empathy tends to be a recurring theme for me here. I love this: In the UX field we talk about a lot of things. Tools, processes, research, design, etc. But it’s easy to forget that a lot of those things are supposed to be ways of finding, feeling, and fixing friction and…

  • Get used to being uncomfortable

    After going through the Certified Scrum Master class (I am fancy now!), I’ve been re-evaluating how projects are ‘managed’ at work. We are not fully agile, but we’ve been slowly applying some of the agile concepts and structures to our workflows. In an agency environment, where projects are fast, furious, and many at the same…

  • Master the basics first

    Very good advice: Until you can reliably deliver what you thought you could deliver, focus on how you define and build software. You don’t need Lean or Kanban or to improve your stand-up meeting. You need to learn how to define, build, and deliver software. Don’t be distracted by nuance if you can’t get the…

  • The cost of gaining knowledge

    Somewhat cynical, but amusing: Every programmer starts out writing some perfect little snowflake like this. Then they’re told on Friday they need to have six hundred snowflakes written by Tuesday, so they cheat a bit here and there and maybe copy a few snowflakes and try to stick them together or they have to ask…

  • Ain’t nobody got time for that.

    Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Sometimes, I feel caught in that conundrum. Especially when it comes to things like planning meetings, or retrospectives. If we stop to plan better, we lose development time, but we should make up that time by doing the work properly the first time. If we stop…

  • Unexpectedly delightful

    I walked by our “atta-boy” wall the other day and realized that I hadn’t updated it in a while. I used to be better about pointing out our successes, both as a team and as individuals, and I have let that fall by the wayside. I do deeply appreciate the staff here. And I need…

  • Regulating development

    An interesting post on the Ken Schwaber blog: Our  shortcomings were surprising to me. When I rolled out Scrum, I thought that the excellent developers that had been stifled by waterfall processes would emerge, and we would again do great work and build great software. Much to my surprise, many never had those skills or had…

  • Being proud of ugly babies

    Every once in a while, we finish something we think is awesome. Shiny. Spectacular. Perfect in every way. A tiny little flawless newborn code-baby, clearly demanding your adoration and unbounded love. And then the client doesn’t like it. “Take that head off,” they say. “Paste it to the stomach, and then put both arms on…

  • Shifting expectations

    I have a client that we have favored highly over the past few weeks – often at the expense of other clients, or at the expense of my development staff’s sanity. After riding out a wave of unforeseen emergencies, we are now transitioning into a regular maintenance schedule. It’s difficult, at times, to transition clients…

  • Efficiency and Effectiveness

    I went and got myself a certification this week – I am now a Certified Scrum Master, thank you very much. Overall, the class was interesting. The teacher was engaging and the format was interactive. I enjoyed having time to dive into “true” scrum practices, see them at work, and better understand the reasoning behind…

  • Accountability, responsibility, and trust

    One of the fascinating things about agile team structure is the delineation between responsibility and accountability. While I may be in charge of making sure something gets done, I may not actually be the one to perform the work. I am accountable to a task without being responsible for actually doing it. As a scrum…

  • We can’t all possibly be the expert, all the time.

    This video has been making the rounds via social media: It’s painful and hilarious at the same time. The thought that niggles at the back of my brain is how everyone identifies with the expert – and we can’t all possibly be the expert.  Surely, there are times that we play each role in this…

  • The cost of what you want

    An excellent point: When you stand and petulantly demand some course of action without regard for the bigger picture, you immediately place yourself into a tiny little box. This person doesn’t understand the full scope of what he is asking, so I can disregard this particular request. Sure, you might know what you are talking about (might…

  • Inspiration

    I’ve been wrangling my feed reader today – culling, adding, focusing, absorbing. Admittedly, recently, the only category of feeds that were read with any regularity was the “entertaining” category. Followed by the “crossfit” and “paleo” categories. This may explain my exuberance for my workouts, and my general sense of malaise at work. I’ve been uninspired.…

  • Who is going to look out for me?

    Expanding spiritual capacity requires subordinating our own needs to something beyond our self-interest.  Because we often perceive our own needs as urgent, shifting attention away from them can prompt very primitive survival fears.  If I truly focus my attention on others, we worry, who is going to look out for me? — The Power of…