Purebreeze

Food Is Not The Only Way Into My Heart | Purebreeze

2010-02-17T09:27:00-08:00

Serenade me with Whitney Houston’s “How Will I Know” and I’m yours.

O2 Hire Agony Aunt | Purebreeze

2010-02-17T05:27:00-08:00

After months of O2 broadband woes I decided to leave. Their final attempt at resolution was to reduce my bandwidth to such a low level that dropped connections became rare (a couple of times a day as opposed to several times a minute whilst at 8Mb). Of course they lied about this and I was still paying for 8Mb.

After years of dissatisfation with O2’s mobile phone network coverage I decided to request my PAC Code and return to my old operator.

Hi, could you send me my PAC Code please.
May I ask why you are leaving?
I'm unhappy with your network coverage and have had a bitter experience with O2 broadband as well.
Have you opened a case with us and had us help you with your problems? After all it's our job to support you. Besides, broadband is a separate franchise.
There's no point because everyone I know on O2 has the same coverage issues across the same locations. It's not the handset, it's definitely the network. Besides, you're all O2 to me regardless of the franchise structure.
Attempts to convince me to let them 'have a go'
No thanks. I just want to leave.
I find your behaviour to be bizarre. Do you turn your back on all relationships at the first sign of conflict without allowing any attempt at resolution?
Give me my PAC Code now.

Joke is on me?

Agile Retroflection of the Day | Purebreeze

2010-01-06T04:12:13-08:00

Eben Halford nominated me to be today’s contributor to Yves Hanoulle’s Agile Retroflection of the Day series. This is quite exciting, scary and a massive honour! Today’s question is this:

“What are the advantages and disadvantages of a coach having practical experience of all the key responsibilities they coach?”

Just to be clear, I am not a coach/trainer or certified in anyway. In fact I sit on the receiving end as a developer. However I do have the pleasure of working with Eben on a daily basis who is an Agile Coach, our CTO and my friend.

I’ve interpreted this question as relating to a coach’s experience performing the day job of one or more of their students. Apologies if I misinterpreted.

The first thought that entered my head was that you don’t need to be good at every discipline within your organisation to be a good CEO. Much in the same way I believe the most important attribute of a coach is their personality, their charisma and a creative approach to problem solving to help you create your own path and guide you down it. Every situation is different so there is no exact science for becoming Agile.

This leads me onto my realm which is within engineering teams. Developers are clearly far more intelligent than their peers. We know more (actually we know everything about everything), our jobs are much more difficult and most people are only here to get in our way and make our lives even harder. We also do not make mistakes.

Joking aside, the feeling that “nobody gets us” is so common in small to medium companies that the them versus us rift that forms between developers and the rest of the company is a tremendous problem and a topic unto itself.

Let’s imagine a team of middle-aged .NET developers. Think sandals, beards, “127.0.0.1 is home” t-shirts and been “doing waterfall” since punch cards were in fashion. You’re either one of them or you’re clearly not. Now if management had sent the following memo:

Dear Team,

Please report to meeting room 167 at 6am next Thursday for your Agile training. Tea, coffee and one biscuit each will be served.

The Management

As a developer my reaction could be to take offence and turn defensive.

In this situation a coach with a background as a jaded software developer will make a much greater impact than any other. The coach’s talent must lie with gaining the respect and support of the team they are training and without understanding them, genuinely convincing them and being part of them I’m afraid you could end up conducting many a failed session.

A brief introduction | Purebreeze

2009-12-25T04:00:00-08:00

I formed Purebreeze at the end of 2009 during my transition from fully employed to freelance technologist.

My last few gigs have involved assembling, leading and being part of software development teams. I have had the fortune of working alongside some truly great software engineers and learnt that making things happen is where I excel amongst them.

For fun I helped co-found Dented Records, which has been running since 2003, and have had recurring stints as a wedding, set and product photographer.

Currently I’m working on Agileista as well as a social project which should help cut tremendous waste in local councils.