Zayne's World Posts

All great truths begin as blasphemies. —George Bernard Shaw

Sofware development is a learning activity with code as a side-effect. – Kent Beck.

There is a progression towards mastery. There are no shortcuts. Shortcuts miss the point, which is that the journey is the most important part of mastery, not some final destination. The concept of shuhari is becoming quite well known in the agile world. It means roughly: “first learn, then detach, and finally transcend.” I leave it to the Aikido master…

Lately I’ve been observing the use of filler words. You know, like, actually, totally overused meaningless words. The two phrases that interest me most are “you know” and “I mean”. When people say “you know” all the time, are they craving for understanding? Is what they’re actually trying to say “Surely you understand what I’m trying to say?” When someone…

I ran an exercise last week with a group of designers at a meet-up. I used the Rotating Flip Charts technique, a brainstorming technique where you place a number of flip charts around a large room, each with a single question. You then divide the large group into smaller groups (1 group per flip chart), give each group 5 minutes…

There are some days that are easier than others. Days when you can’t seem to get it right, whatever “it” is. Frustration sets in. Anger even. “I didn’t have a problem with this yesterday!” ”This is supposed to be easy!” Even the calm, composed, rational thinking that you pride yourself on goes out the window. You find yourself judging people…

I drove by yet another terrible car accident this week. This just increases my hope that we’ll have completely autonomous traffic in my lifetime. I can’t wait for self-driving cars to become the norm and take over from humans.  We really do think we’re infallible and unbreakable. Our irrational brains are not made for the complexity of traffic. We hold on…

I’ve been coding over the weekends. I’m building an online platform as part of my masters degree. It’s been so refreshing working in the analytical and logical world of code again! So much of my life is spent working with people, listening, observing, coaching, helping them grow. Computers and code are nothing like that. Troubleshooting is easy. It simply involves…

This week I attended Agile Africa 2017 and was particularly struck by a debate that raged on in one of the fishbowl sessions about frameworks in the agile world, particularly the SAFe framework. Practitioners emotionally presented their various points of view – why this framework is so bad, why this one has more merit, why this one is the downfall…

I woke up yesterday to a cold front covering Joburg. Like most people (I imagine) I entertained the thought of staying in bed, warmly wrapped up. But I got up, dressed for crossfit, and went to get my morning exercise done. Yes it was cold, but the feeling of satisfaction afterwards was invigorating. After that I took my dog for…