Recently I have spent some time thinking about teams. How it happens that few people become a team? What factors are at play? This is pretty important to me right now because few weeks ago I moved to a new team. And I want this team become fantastic. So there is plenty to think about…
Author: Tomek Kaczanowski
Drive by Daniel H. Pink – Book Review
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink. The book is all about motivation. It explains why the old way of carrot & stick does not work any more. And it shows the new motivation based on three pillars: autonomy, mastery and purpose. I will not repeat what the book says,…
Books To Read 2015
When listening to talks during the last conferences I attended – ACE! Conference and GeeCON – I have noticed that there are some books which titles reappear here and then. I guess this is because they are worth reading. And I plan to read them in 2015 (omg, need some extra time for this!). I…
Sign Your Work
Few days ago I learned a very simple, yet powerful trick which saved me some time. To make long story short, it happened on a test environment shared between few projects. I deployed a new version of one application there, and after some time received emails with errors. Uh-oh, apparently I have broken something! Hmm……
ACE! Conference 2015
ACE! Conference 2015 is (unfortunately) over. Great time, great people, great event! It was the first time I attended an agile conference, and I have to admit, I enjoyed it. I listened to few really interesting talks, and I had some interesting conversations with other attendees. There were also some very interesting discussions during the…
Ending Life of Kanban Cards (Vlad The Impaler Fatality)
The question is what to do with the kanban cards after they were taken from your kanban board? The simplest answer is to “throw them away”. Well, yes, sure, they are not needed anymore. My colleagues from the next-door team (hello @tkowalcz!) have a different idea. The cards end up on a stake. Sweet, isn’t…
Retro Game – New Year Predictions
The beginning of a year seems like a good time for some predictions. Today I planned a very short and simple game for my team to check our future telling abilities. (picture from http://freedomwatch.ipa.org.au) I have printed out a short form with some questions related to our product and the team. The questions were are…
Thinking in Systems – Book Review
I’ve been reading “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows recently. A good book, definitely worth my time (and yours probably as well). Among many interesting things I have found three, which draw my attention, because of some IT/programming connotations. Big Black Box Well, yes. A poem. It is about systems, but fits quite nicely…
Finding Latest Versions of Dependencies With Maven
From time to time it is good to see what are the latest versions of the libraries you use (because maybe you would like to upgrade). You can use the Versions Maven Plugin like this: mvn versions:display-dependency-updates versions:display-plugin-updates but the output is too verbose. And for multi-module project you will get flooded with same information…
KDE vs. Gnome vs. Unity vs. Windows 3.1
Recently during the lunch at work, we have discussed the operating systems. You know, the usual Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac stuff. The discussion wasn’t very interesting, because no one opted for Windows. 🙂 So, lacking an opponent, we moved to some Linux related issues. [from: http://guide.notizie.it/come-evitare-una-flame-war/] During the discussion I realized how I do…