We read blogs because we want to learn, expand our horizons and keep up with new developments in the Industry. We write blogs because we are passionate about a topic, want to share some cool ideas and very often to market ourselves. There is an overlap but readers and writers are not always in sync. There is so much to read and so little time. Over the last few months I have looked at about 250 somewhat random blogs. I stumbled upon some excellent articles but the majority was either talking to the absolute beginner audience or plain mediocre.
One of my favorite quotes is from Jorgen Vig Knudstorp, CEO of Lego: “Blame is not for failure, it is for failing to help or ask for help”. So I reached out to see what blogs others read. Esther Derby told me that she lets her social network filter for her. She finds Martin Fowler and Ron Jeffries always worthwhile. Dan North mentioned Adrian Colyer’s The Morning Paper. Stefan Wolpers has over three hundred blogs in his RSS reader. Not sure how he keeps up. Barry Overeem’s favorites include blogs by Nomad8, Crisp, The Ready, Roman Pichler and Geoff Watts.
In my own experience I found about 50 blogs by 37 authors were very worthwhile to read. Dan North, Ron Jeffries, Dave Nicolette, Mike Cohn and Roman Pilcher had 3 or more articles of interest. Of Course I may have missed some awesome work by other authors. My conclusion is to watch some specific blogs. But I will keep scanning for the occasional surprise.
What blogs do you read?
Below is a list of some of the most interesting blogs I read this year.
- Natalie Warnert Story Point Comparison Retro
- Roman Pichler MAKING CONSENSUS-BASED PRODUCT DECISIONS
- Maria Muir Finding balance between Agile frameworks and mindset
- Sandeep Jain Understand themes, epics and user stories
- Ebenezer Ikonne Should A Scrum Master Have A Goal To Make Themselves Unneeded?
- Saravana Bharathi Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery
- Parvati Uppala Agile Manifesto Principles Behind Scrum Activities
- Aaron Tooth Starting with the Daily Scrum
- John Cutler 40 Ways to Invest in More Resilient Teams
- Geoff Watts It only takes one.
- Avinash Tripathi Retrospectives and What They Can Tell Us
- JOHN TANNER AGILE METRICS: A GQM APPROACH
- Stephanie Ockerman The Daily Scrum is NOT a Status Meeting
- Scott Sehlhorst The Potential of Agile
- Ron Jeffreys Small topics: Done, and Sprint Length
- Colleen Johnson Your Retrospectives Need Better Data
- Gunther Verheyen How ambitious is your “Done” ?
- Roman Pichler 4 DAILY SCRUM TIPS FOR PRODUCT OWNERS & PRODUCT MANAGERS
- Mike Cohn Why the Whole Team Should Participate When Estimating
- DAVE NICOLETTE THE HAWTHORNE EFFECT REVISITED
- Christopher Lewis Agile Athletes: Part 2
- Philip Coler A Quick Look at Agile Grooming
- Dave Nicolette User Stories Don’t Work for our Team
- Mike Cohn The Difference Between a Story and a Task
- Dan North Decisions, Decisions
- Mike Cohn Two Types of Authority Leaders Must Give to Self-Organizing Teams
- Shane Billings Lean Principles Applied in Agile
- DAVE NICOLETTE THE FALSE ECONOMY OF NOT CHANGING ANYTHING
- esther derby Change Artist Super Powers: Patience
- Dan North BLINK ESTIMATION
- Ron Jeffries “Business Agile”: Built Upon Sand
- Ron Jeffries New Framework — the Increment
- Ron Jeffries Writing Tomorrow’s Legacy Code Today
- Natalie Warnert Cost of delay and opportunity cost when you don’t build quality in
- Ebenezer Ikonne Ka anyi kwuo okwu (Let’s Talk)
The opinions represented in this blog are my own, and not that of my employer or the organizations that I work with.