Kal Walkden

Kal Walkden / Writing

Writing

Notes on technology, product, teams, and the decisions that connect them.

  • The Code Repository as Working Memory

    Explore how treating the code repository as durable working memory preserves decisions and evidence, enabling people and AI agents to build more ambitious software together with continuity and confidence.

  • Good automation doesn't eliminate human decisions

    Good automation doesn't eliminate human decisions. It makes them more visible, deliberate, and informed. Sometimes that means deliberately keeping a manual step.

  • As AI gets cheaper, judgment becomes more valuable

    As AI models become cheaper and more interchangeable, competitive advantage shifts toward better decisions, proprietary data, workflows, and customer relationships.

  • AI doesn’t lower the cost of building the wrong thing

    AI is rapidly lowering the cost of building software. But it doesn’t lower the cost of building the wrong thing.

  • Building Collaborative, User-Centered Product Teams

    A conversation on the Innovation and The Digital Enterprise Podcast about applying product expertise to advance Double Good’s mission.

  • Goodbye ... for now

    When I started this blog, Agile was not yet the lingua franca of product development. I was passionate about teaching the Chicago community about Agile. I helped start the Chicago Agile Project Managers Meet Up.

  • An Easier Way to Decide

    Originally posted on ForeverCar Blog: https://blog.forevercar.com/an-easier-way-to-decide You probably have far more important priorities than taking the time to research vehicle service protection plans. That’s where we come in.

  • Ember: Actions Up, Data Sideways

    The rallying cry for Ember 2.0 has been “Data Down, Actions Up”. Ember's component based architecture sets a pattern where data is passed “down” to child components, while children “request” changes from their parents by triggering actions.

  • Debugging Minified Javascript

    This is an error we got in the early morning hours from our staging environment: There are lots of things to like about minifying Javascript except this of course. Removing proper variables annihilates context so completely.

  • Your Inconsistent Design Makes Me Worry About Your Entire Product

    This is from a product I use daily. Who wrote this code and thought they were done? Who approved these two button styles next to one another? I have this vision of a developer choosing a library that made their development life easier.

  • Applying user centric design to your business plan

    I got asked by an investor recently how we at Digital H2O do design. I liked the conciseness of my response and thought it was a good example of how to tie user centric design into a business plan.

  • How to start a product redesign - a playbook

    A few months back I was working on a large, ground-up redesign for a product I own. I had a little trouble getting started. I realized I needed a playbook to remind me of the basics.

  • The sum of my experience with product making

    People make companies and products. Process helps support and grow good people, but fundamentally it's all about the people. There is a whole lot more to it than that, but this is the first thing to know.

  • Advice for Developers and Designers Working Together

    From my talk at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business: Excellent advice on getting developers, designers and managers to work together. It's featured here in our [UrbanBound's] latest blog! hub.am/XeZ6hq

  • Customer Development for "Product You"

    As a manager I've always found it hard to get honest feedback from employees and my management.

  • What Is A Product Showcase?

    I couldn't find a simple description of a product showcase today so I wrote a quick one myself The showcase is an important part of product development.

  • An update to principled leadership

    One my most popular posts of all time is one I put up in 2009 about Principled Leadership. I still get traffic from this post and once got a very aggressive job solicitation based on the principals outlined in the post.

  • Shallow Copy in Ruby

    I often wonder why some organizations only consider candidates who have computer science or computer engineering degrees. In the real world I have seen many great developers who have come from diverse backgrounds.

  • From the maker's perspective...

    I came across this article via LinkedIn. It reminds me of the Maker Schedule, Manager Schedule discussion except its from a maker perspective.

  • Call It Like It Is - Save Time and Money by Filtering Out Non-Users in Your Application's Design

    At UrbanBound we are necessarily obsessed with who our users are - and who they aren't. An application designed for baby boomers utilizes very different design principals than one designed for a younger audience.

  • Why I hate the Internet sometimes

    Watch my site get slow. Watch me download the logs to make sure nothing happened. Thanks for wasting my time script kiddies.

  • Why car companies need to do usability testing

    Overall I love my Toyota Prius. Under the hood, it is an engineering marvel. Prius' have been around for 10 years and still sell like hotcakes. I honestly don't understand why Ford hasn't made a competing product by now.

  • Looking Back at My Most Popular Posts

    Anybody who has worked with me knows that I'm a fan of analytics. If you are selling soap or software development services, I strongly believe you should be capturing metrics on how people use and interact with your product.

  • Jakob Nielsen's Kindle Fire Usability Findings

    I don't like to re-post, but I highly recommend reading this. Tablets are, finally, not going to go away and will only increase in usage. Jakob Nielsen does a great job of discussing the usability and design of 7-inch tablets.

  • Review: Individuals and Interactions an agile guide

    In Individuals and Interactions an agile guide, Ken Howard and Barry Rogers give us a set of tools for managing individuals on agile projects.

  • Review: Leading Lean Software Development

    I am reviewing books I have read in the past for an upcoming coaching gig. I realized I hadn't posted this review on my blog yet!

  • Six Reasons Why EA Should NOT be Assigned to the IT Department

    I have always disliked working with the "big architecture" people. It was only in the last 5 years that I came to realize why. Enterprise Architects are often software developers who have reached the pinacle of programming greatness.

  • Agile In Regulated Software - Partnering

    This may be generic advice, but it might not be a familiar concept for those in IT working within a large organization doing validated software: Once you adopt the practices described in my previous blogs about regulated software, you will

  • Agile in Regulated Software - Sweat the Details

    Very few people in the software development community have issues with maintaining good attention to the details. However, I bet those who live in the regulated software community view the “normal” software world as quite sloppy.

  • Agile in Regulated Software - Its not what you wear. Its how you wear it.

    Its not what you wear. Its how you wear it. I have to thank Tavi Scandiff-Pirvu for coining this expression as it relates to regulated software development.

  • Agile in Regulated Software - Functional Testing vs Technical Testing

    Testing is a crucial part of all software development. If you don't believe this you are likely just starting your career or haven't had to support an application in production with users.

  • Agile in Regulated Software - Checklists

    Lets be honest: Checklists aren't the most exciting topic to blog about. However, in the context of regulation they become interesting. Everybody loves checklists and hates them at the same time.

  • Agile in Regulated Software - Have Some Class

    The FDA states that a medical device is a product that is used for medical purposes in patients, in diagnosis, therapy, or surgery.

  • Agile In Regulated Software - Methodology

    Methodology "The analysis of the principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline" For software companies these day it seems that its not a hard choice to follow Agile principles.

  • Agile In Regulated Software - It can be done!

    We have all heard that developing software utilizing Agile principles yields high quality, working software in customers' hands quickly.

  • Product Camp Chicago

    Join me at Product Camp Chicago this Saturday April 2, 2011 to see my talk about How to Incorporate Apple like design into your products. http://bit.ly/eCTVN5

  • All the things I never thought I would use my iPad for

    My family bought me an iPad for fathers day last year. I have been completely surprised how much I use it professionally and personally.

  • Everyone hates gadgets! Don't make your product a gadget

    My mother sent me the following comment in a email recently: "Us senior citizens don't need anymore gadgets. The tv remote and the garage door remote are about all we can handle." I find the concept of gadgets interesting.

  • Boarding Pass - You're doing it wrong

    Boarding Pass or Billboard?

  • What I have been reading recently

    I have been busy helping customers design apps and doing more reading than writing these days.

  • In Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself

    In Reflections on Management: How to Manage Your Software Projects, Your Teams, Your Boss, and Yourself Watts Humphrey presents a number of essays discussing how to manage software projects, teams, bosses and yourself.

  • I'm not a technical manager, how do I find a Software Developer?

    A friend contacted me for advice on how to find and hire a good software developer. The problem is that he is a non-technical manager and only needs one person.

  • I have a workshop and a bridge to sell you...come on by

    I got an advertisement for a workshop about how to develop SaaS products. The title was, "Silly Agility--The Myth of the SaaS Agile Product Manager".

  • Android: What I like about you

    Anybody who has been to our office knows I am an Android fan. My prediction is that the Android platform will end up with a much, much larger install base than iPhone OS.

  • Review: Making it Big in Software

    In Making it Big in Software, Sam Lightstone has the ambitious task of giving you "all the information you need to jumpstart your software career: the best ways to get hired, move up, and blaze your way to the top!".

  • Review: Succeeding with Agile

    In Succeeding with Agile, Mike Cohn gives organizations a handbook for how to succeed using Agile practices and principals.

  • Who values your product and do you value them?

    We have reached the most critical point on a project I'm working on. After a few months we think we know enough about the domain and application to build a product road map that will take us to the first public release.

  • What’s the value of Agile out of the box?

    I often meet peers who ask what Agile practices Pathfinder utilizes. From the outside we pretty much use all of XP’s practices.

  • Review: Leading Lean Software Development

    In Leading Lean Software Development, Mary and Tom Poppendieck present a handbook for how to run a software development group, top to bottom.

  • SDLC or Product Design – You Decide

    …or the telephone game Last weekend I was watching a movie with my kids. In the movie there was a chain of monkeys that needed to pass on the message from one character to one on the other side of the chain.

  • Looking Back: Creating a Software Factory – Part 3

    This is the final post in my three part series (see parts one & two) about creating a software factory.

  • How to Interview and Hire a Good Project Manager

    This is a topic near and dear to me these days. I have been blogging about leadership a lot recently and think some discussion about how to actually find and hire those with leadership skills is in order.

  • We don’t have time for all of these meetings!

    :: Originally Posted on Pathfinder Development's Blog :: The majority of people who develop software utilizing agile practices find that they spend much less time in meetings than they did before they discovered Agile thinking.

  • Building a High Performance Agile Team: Assume You Will Be a One Hit Wonder

    :: Originally Posted on Pathfinder Development's Blog :: One thing about agile teams is that they constantly strive to get better. In my experience an Agile team takes 2-4 iterations to work through the forming stage.

  • Agile 2009: A reminder of why each team needs leadership

    :: Originally Posted on the Pathfinder Development's Blog :: Last week I presented at Agile 2009 a workshop for those new to Agile entitled: The Agile Game: An Experiential Workshop.

  • Getting a team over the fear of daily scrums

    ::Originally posted on the Pathfinder Development's Blog:: If my previous post about the value of agile meetings over traditional status meetings got you interested, I want to share a common pattern of behavior I often see from teams trying

  • Great Article about how to manage technical people

    The unspoken truth about managing geeks http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/print/9137708/Opinion_The_unspoken_truth_about_managing_geeks

  • Looking Back: Creating a Software Factory – Part 2

    In my last post I talked about the first iteration of the software factory I created. In it I talked about how I followed traditional management techniques to add offshore developers and testers to the team.

  • Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

    One of my colleagues at Pathfinder sent this out to the whole company. I have been on the manager's schedule since 2001. Now [more and more] I'm on the maker's schedule.

  • Looking Back: Creating a Software Factory – Part 1

    A few years back, while managing a software development department, I developed an efficient software factory based on lean principals that directly supported a $2Billion per year business.

  • The Death of Productivity

    I don't often re-post from others' blogs. However, I came across a blog post worth passing on. In my career I have never understood working 60+ hours. Even in graduate school I'd work from 10am to 11pm - but only for 4 days a week!

  • Effective vs Efficient Teams

    We hear more and more about large organizations adopting Agile software development practices recently. This is not surprising given that Agile practices have many advantages over traditional methods.

  • Something you can try on your next fixed bid project

    Depending on your company’s commitment to agile principals you might find yourself on a classic fixed bid project. A while back, at a previous employer, I found myself in just such a position.

  • Adopting Agile Practices: Its going to be hard!

    Right now I'm coaching some teams with projects in flight. To do this I generally start by showing them one or two agile practices. After getting buy-in we use the practices for an iteration - retrospect and refine.

  • There is no conductor in Agile

    Recently I have been coaching a number of SAP project managers on how to manage their projects utilizing agile practices and principals.

  • Principled Leadership

    Something I have been thinking about recently... Principled Leadership has the following principles representing actions that leaders need to take to transform their organizations into outcome and value focused organizations serving

  • Systematic Amateurism

    Occasionally somebody from outside of my project stumbles upon notes I have written from a retrospective or other meeting.

  • The State of Scrum

    I found this interesting article in the Agile Journal about Scrum. A few quotes stood out to me: "When you consider that Scrum challenges teams to always be growing and improving, it makes sense that it has emerged as the most popular agile

  • Planning for Improvisation

    When I joined Redpoint I noticed a disproportionate number of musicians in the firm.

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