Articles
Here you'll find things I wrote besides Let's be Fwends, my biweekly newsletter. While Let's be Fwends is a bit of an augmented curated link collection, I'm focusing on my own ideas here.
I could have included just a chronologically sorted list of titles (and maybe the abstracts so that you roughly know what to expect when you click on a link), but I thought it would be more fun to actually add some context to the articles by embedding them into a broader text. In Personal Knowledge Management land, they call this a "Map of Content".
I'm trying this structure, because writing in a more traditional style of monolithic, self-contained 'articles' doesn't do the things I try to cover justice, and it creates some stress to produce those big, content-rich pieces and I rarely find the time to do so. Emulating how I write notes, I hope I can increase my output somewhat.
So, here's a different approach to an "Overview Page". If you're just looking for the newest article, look up, there it is :)
(But if you insist on a boring chronological list, you can find one here)
Scrum And Agile
One of the things many people (let alone organisations) struggle with is the fact that Scrum is in its essence boss-less. How to survive as a Scrum team in a larger organisation and how to push the boundaries of your own authority: Who is my boss (anyway)?.
Complexity and Uncertainty can be powerful allies, if you don't stiffle them. You can't outplan uncertainty anyway, so please Stop Planning the Unplannable.
Usually, I go to great lengths coaching teams to focus on outcomes, and not output. But sometimes, just sometimes, it's ok to track outputs. This piece also highlights a common anti-pattern of improvement actions: Ignoring that in most cases, we're trying to address a habit and not a one-off thing.
Hey, talking about 'Outcomes': Have we Agile folk lost our way? Were we swayed by leaders who wanted Agile Transitions but never true agility, trying to make teams and organisations "agile" without actually changing the underlying powerstructures? Fell to the idea of the cookie-cutter? do we need a more pragmatic approach to agility?
I've seen many teams struggle with agile software development practices. And I've seen teams really benefiting from them. The difference? Usually, their approach to testing. Test Automation and Agility is a short note about the importance of testing for agile software teams.
A similar topic is how to handle bugs - And I used to argue that bugs a special beasts that need their own processes. But nowadays, I'm not so sure. I Changed My View On Estimating Bugs and So Can You.
Failing to Integrate Transformative Work
A lot of talk about Agile and agility is about speed. "Twice the work in half the time" someone quite famously said. This gave slowness a bad reputation, and everybody started to rush. But being deliberate is not the opposite of being fast, so - please - slow the fuck down.
Playing around a bit with a semiotic device, the "Greimas Square", here's a little study of Commitment and Compliance as a pair of opposites.
Coaching
Coaching is a two-way street. The coach forms the relationship just as much as the coachee. How you're working as a coach depends on your personality, your ethics, and your view of what's important. This is how I See the Scrum Master Role.
Value Stream Mappings are extremely valuable exercises, not only for their ability to improve work flows substantiall, but also for their transformational power. You can - for example - use them to break down silo-thinking in a group of people.
Distributed Agile Organisations
The year is (early) 2021. With the exception of a handful of tech companies, the rest of the world is suddenly forced to figure out how this "remote" and "distributed" things work - and how Agile fits into this. I've spent the better part of a year with an organisation to figure this out, and shared my insights with the "Empowering Agile Greece" conference in a talk called "The Risks and Benefits of Agile Practices in Distributed Organisations".
All Things Practical
Has it ever occured to you that you started your day, ready to do some work, only to find yourself staring into the void of ambition without a goal? A blank space where ideas should be? Social Media scrolling instead of getting it done? Try to Add some Hooks to your work to avoid this nightmare scenario.
Generosity is a wonderful thing. It can create very strong bonds and form great relationships. It is also very exploitable by people who hack the Rule of Reciprocity.
An idea to tackle the proliferation of recurring meetings: Invite, don't Invent.
I understand that many organisations are pretty much oral cultures. Meetings - especially online meetings in distributed organisations - have a tribal function that reassures participants of their roles and places in the village community. But if you fail to capture your meetings in a medium that is time- and place-transient, it's like those meetings never happened. Writing good documentation is a key skill all distributed organisations must master. And a very practical aspect of this skill is to understand what the perfect time to write down meeting notes is.
What is Work?
Transforming work puts a significant emphasis on unlearning what used to be important but is now obsolete. But you can't expect people to unlearn anything if you don't change their context (because "Context defines mindset"). So, in order to make unlearning effective, you need to think about the importance of a change in environments for unlearning
What is more important? The work itself, or its outcome? And how do you define the outcome you're looking for? This question is not easy to answer, and it led me to think about tracking page views.
What is 'Work'? And What is 'Good Work'?
Towards a Human Way of Working, my own little manifesto.
Psychological Safety
What role does trust play in the context of safety and (in)security? And more specifically, what kind of trust are we talking about? Trust and Insecurity compares the concept of "Manufactured Insecurity" with a certain type of workplace, and explores what 'trust' in a work context truly means.
Free Your Mind From Thoughts About Catastrophes
Make the Zeigarnik-Effect Work for You
Banning political debate from the workplace is wrong
Nifty Tools
A collection of tools (social, technological, philosophical).
The "Ladder of Inference" to uncover the reasons of disagreement: Two Solutions, one Problem?
Scaffolds and Ladders help teams starting out, but should be removed as time goes by.
Here's one that didn't age well: How Evernote become my Operating System. Since publishing this I've ditched both Evernote and Getting Things Done. On the other hand, it is interesting to see what actually transcended both the application and the framework - the values and practices I established many years ago very much influenced how I see Personal Productivity & Knowledge Management and shape how I use my current tool Obsidian.
That one Flow hack that hijacks the concept of Flow and let's you better understand the particular mental state you'll need or can expect of a task.
Go for a Walk - a practical tip on what to do when stuck while thinking.
A simple DataView script for moments of serendipity in Obsidian.
Organisations
Frames of Reference and the Zanclean Flood
Gloriously Out of Place Things I Like Nonetheless
In 2017, I did some research into the experience users have with their cycling-related software. As a result, I published a report and a series of articles you can read here. In 2025, I added a commentary, trying to highlight what has changed, and what hasn't.
9 Vignettes in three Acts about everyday Life and logical Fallacies
Link Graph
Yeah, I know, the 2000s knocked and wanted to show you their ideas about knowledge navigation, but I really like those graphs, even if they are not the most practical instruments, plus I actually developed a network-based knowledge management system called 'Serendipity' back in the day, so please stop making fun of me.