The Best of the Week (Oct 31): Agile Zone

Make sure you didn't miss anything with this list of the Best of the Week in the Agile Zone (October 31 - November 07). Here they are, in order of popularity:

1. Engineering Joke of the Week: The Tunnel

• I’m a believer that engineers not only need to act in a professional and ethical way, but they have to have a sense of humor too. For that reason I have the tradition to tell my class (almost) every semester week a joke or fun story with an engineering background. I have been asked to share the fun story from this week, so here we go...

2. Is Your Culture Working the Way You Think it Is?

• One day, the Big Bosses, the CEO and the VP Engineering spoke at an all-hands meeting. “You are empowered,” they said. They had a vision. They just knew what the future would hold. I managed to keep my big mouth shut.

3. Technical Debt Takes Many Forms

• Most people are familiar with “technical debt” in terms of code or architectural problems that slow down development. There are other forms of technical debt, though, that can be overlooked.

4. Dialogue Sheets Update (1 of 2)

• It has been a while since I’ve written about Dialogue Sheets here - or indeed anywhere else. So here is a quick update and a request for some guinea pigs - I have ideas for new sheets but I need some teams to try them out.

5. Career planning: What is your path?

• As discussed in the previous post, a lot of developers move to management positions at some point in their careers. Now let's turn this around, instead of asking what is going on in the industry, let’s check what is going on with you. In particular, do you have a career plan at all?