links for 2009-06-04

• Dear Dustin Curtis | Dustin Curtis
  Lovely account of web UX in a large organisation: "So, since it won’t all get done overnight, don’t give us a bad grade if you don’t see it happening fast enough for your taste. Even a large organization can effect change; it just takes a different approach than the methods found in smaller shops. But it’ll happen because it has to, and we know that. And we’ll keep on keepin’ on, even if most of us really and truly would prefer to throw it all away and start over."
  (tags: culture design usability process ux)
• Agile antipattern: Insanity! (5 insanity antipatterns)
  "It is sometimes said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. This definition has been attributed to Ben Franklin and Albert Einstein, but research shows it is unlikely either originated it (there are many more instances on the web, I just referenced one). In years past I modified the quote to say good developers test quite well, bad developers run the same code over and over again expecting it to pass at some point in the future! I think we would all agree we try not to be insane. Unfortunately, when it comes to agile implementations we can not only become insane, but we sometimes even try to defend the insanity!"
  (tags: agile patterns)
• WelfareCSM
  Tobias Mayer's lovely WelfareCSM, offering the Certified Scrum Master course to those who can't afford to pay the normally painfully high prices.
  (tags: Scrum CSM training)
• effective software development: XP2009: My report
  Dave Nicolette's summary of the highs and lows of XP2009.
  (tags: xp agile xp2009 conference)