Category: Uncategorised

Team Taxonomies and Personal Profiles

I was reading this blog post by Emily Webber last week, which nicely compliments the Team Topologies book, and is something I think might add some value in my organisation. It puts enabling teams on a more level footing, defines who they enable, and also records whether a team is long-lived or temporary. This would allow organisations to record project teams in the same way as long-lived teams, and might better help highlight people who are in too many teams, as well as teams that don’t have a clear purpose.

I think mapping existing operating models in this way would be a good first step towards designing new operating models.

I would like to get my personal profiles idea off the ground soon. It’s like team charters/APIs, but for individuals. I think it’s really important to understand how each person in a team works, especially if you are in that team, and so much friction that I see between individuals would likely be reduced if each person had something written down about what they are responsible for, how they like to work, and how best to get in touch with them. I think this is likely something I will just have to try myself to see how it works, before suggesting that other people adopt it, but it definitely works for me on a theoretical level.

Comparing the ITIL v4 Guiding Principles with the Twelve Principles of Agile Software Development

I work in IT Service Management, but also help lead my organisation’s Agile Community of Practice. I don’t see these two things as being different, so much as just being two distinct lenses through which we can observe and influence how work is done. One thing I have noticed is that I come across very few people who are familiar with both the ITIL v4 Guiding Principles and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software Development. This leads to assumptions that they are very different, and in many ways polar opposites, but there is actually a lot of synergy, and even the differences are not that different.

The ITIL guiding principles and the Twelve Principles of Agile Software Development share some common themes, such as a focus on value, collaboration, and continuous improvement. However, they originate from different frameworks: ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is primarily concerned with IT service management, while Agile focuses on software development methodologies, but both are definitely usable with all sorts of different types of work outside what they were originally designed for.

Comparison of ITIL Guiding Principles and Agile Principles

ITIL Guiding Principles Twelve Agile Principles Comparison & Key Differences
1. Focus on value 1. Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery Both emphasise delivering value to customers. ITIL applies this broadly to IT services, while Agile focuses on delivering working software quickly.
2. Start where you are 12. Regularly reflect and adjust behavior for effectiveness ITIL suggests building on existing resources, while Agile promotes frequent reflection to refine practices.
3. Progress iteratively with feedback 3. Deliver working software frequently Both advocate incremental improvements, though Agile focuses more on frequent product releases.
4. Collaborate and promote visibility 4. Business and developers must work together daily ITIL emphasises collaboration across IT teams, while Agile insists on daily business-developer cooperation.
5. Think and work holistically 6. Face-to-face conversation is the best way to communicate ITIL promotes a systemic, interconnected approach, while Agile emphasises direct, personal communication.
6. Keep it simple and practical 10. Simplicity—the art of maximising work not done—is essential Both stress simplicity, but Agile focuses on minimising unnecessary work, while ITIL emphasises practical solutions.
7. Optimise and automate 8. Sustainable development should be maintained indefinitely ITIL advocates automation for efficiency, while Agile promotes sustainable work practices to maintain long-term efficiency.

Key Differences

  • Customer Interaction: Agile emphasises continuous customer collaboration, while ITIL is more about delivering service value holistically.
  • Speed & Adaptability: Agile encourages rapid iterations and responsiveness, whereas ITIL focuses on stability, efficiency, and control.
  • Communication: Agile prioritises face-to-face communication, while ITIL supports visibility across IT services.
  • Automation: ITIL actively promotes automation, while Agile focuses more on human collaboration.

Conclusion

Both frameworks advocate for efficiency, value delivery, and continuous improvement, but Agile is more developer-centric and fast-paced, while ITIL is more service-oriented and structured. Organisations often integrate both frameworks to balance agility and stability in IT service management, and that is very much the end goal I have for the work I am doing right now, and for my organisation as a whole.

Building a Community of Practice

Over the last few months I have been involved in building an Agile Community of Practice at my workplace. It’s up to over 150 members and is going well. This post attempts to collate some of the resources we used, and blog posts that proved insightful when deciding what we wanted to do.

We started with Emily Webber’s blog, and also her excellent book Building successful communities of practice. But there were a few other websites that we also found useful:

I hope to add more to this list as I read up more on the subject.

New Music

This is what I’m listening to this weekend. All of these were released or re-released during the last 3 weeks. It’s only February, but there’s already so much great new music this year.

Responding to a power cut

We had a short power cut earlier this week, which was a good test of the power resilience we have configured in the caravan. We are using some kit that requires constant electricity to function, but try and ensure that anyone who is working can continue to work for a few hours in the event of losing electricity.

And that’s exactly what happened. When our main router lost power, devices seamlessly connected to the secondary one (which has a battery), and the internet continued to work. There was no report of a loss of connection, just of one monitor powering off. We actually got as far as unplugging the monitor to swap it out before we realised that other devices in the van were also without power, and that the monitor was actually fine.

If we were using our USB-C monitors then we probably wouldn’t have noticed, which is a good indication that things are working largely as expected.

As I’m not working this week I’m using my more powerful mini-pc because I wanted to give it a decent road test. It didn’t survive the outage, but did restart as soon as power was back. I probably need a better solution if I am going to used this type of computer more, but if I was using my work setup I would have been fine until either the battery in my laptop or in the backup router gave out.

There is more we could do, but it was good to be able to validate our current setup here.

Punk, hardcore and metal albums of 2024

Over the last two years I have found myself listening to a lot of heavier music, and even some heavy metal, which is a new genre for me. I don’t know lots about this music, but I did think it was worth writing a list of things I’ve enjoyed, as a subset of a longer list that will follow later in the month.

I am definitely interested in more music in these genres, or anything that sounds a bit like them.

LM Studio Experiments

I have been experimenting with LM Studio over the last few days. This is a tool that allows me to run large language models locally on my computer, making it ideal for when I’m travelling or spending time somewhere with a slow or unreliable internet connection. It’s cross-platform (Windows, Silicon Macs and Linux), and has so far worked on every machine I’ve tried it on, although not always with the default settings.

There are a number of different runtimes and language models to choose from, with the smallest ones working on a laptop with 8Gb of RAM, and the large ones requiring a very powerful computer to get the best out of them. I’ver tried them on my work and home computers to do the sort of thing I use Copilot and ChatGPT for, and the experience is comparable, especially when using some of the larger models.

Ideally the software wants a decent graphics card and lots of RAM. The latter I can provide it with, but on my desktop computer it initially failed to work because it was trying to use my old and slow graphics card which is nowhere near good enough for this kind of tool. In this scenario it was just a case of telling it use a different runtime (CPU llama.cpp), and then everything started working as expected.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Linux version ships as an AppImage, which means it needs Fuse v2 to run. Newer distros will need to install libfuse2t64 to get it to run in the first place, but after that everything should just work.

In a world where AI is the future, but privacy is important as well, I think tools like this are definitely worth spending some time with.

Songs of a Lost World

Yesterday was the release day for the new album by The Cure. I used to try and pick up their albums on release day when I was younger, but don’t think I have managed to do so since Wish as very long time ago.

My first thought is that this record is really good. I keep trying to compare it to other Cure albums, and the best that I can do is that it’s a bit like the best parts of Disintegration and Bloodflowers. There isn’t a bad song on it, and I think it’s something I’ll come back to for many years.

If you like The Cure you will love this. And if you like music in general it’s definitely worth a listen.

In the evening there was the album launch concert, which took place at The Troxy, but was also broadcast live on YouTube which meant I could watch it without all the logistical challenges that a concert in London presents. It started with a performance of the whole new album, which is what I expected, but was then followed by a 2+ hour set of old favourites and a few things I wasn’t expecting (such as a whole segment dedicated to songs from Seventeen Seconds). It reminded me how important this band were to me when I was growing up, and how much time I have spent listening to their music. I think this lineup is probably the best ever; although it’s not too different to who was on the stage in 1989 when I last saw them play live.

Everyone looks older, but they still sound great, and these songs definitely stand the test of time. I think the new ones will as well, and am hopeful that the rumours of one more album before they retire are true.

New Music

It’s been another good week for new music. I try and listen to a few new things every Friday whilst working, and this is the selection I chose yesterday:

I’m already familiar with all three artists, but it’s always good to hear new music from old favourites.