links for 2009-03-22

• effective software development: Un-gelling the team
  "Most agile practitioners understand it takes some time for a team to "gell," or settle into the routine of working smoothly together. Until that time, the team doesn't achieve its own normal throughput or velocity. This is one of the reasons for the agile guideline to form teams for the long term and keep the same people together project after project, in contrast with the traditional approach of forming a new team for each project. What surprises me is the widely-held assumption in the agile community that it's okay to change one or a few team members occasionally. Project managers and ScrumMasters tend not to treat this as a "new team" situation. They don't adjust their projected completion dates for delivery when they change individual team members. The assumption is that swapping out one team member doesn't disrupt the team very much."
  (tags: collaboration change team agile)
• The Cult of Done Manifesto
  (tags: productivity Writing)
• Clarke Ching - Popularity of numbers
  "I've just googled the numbers 1 - 20, recorded how many hits for each number, then popped them in a spreadsheet."
  (tags: visualization number)