Rick Tonoli

Author: Rick Tonoli

  • A great team

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    Rick Tonoli
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    For me agile is about many things but first and foremost it is about people and dynamics between people, you get the right recipe going and anything is possible. I work with what I think is a great team, but what makes them a great team? I’m not entirely sure but here are some of…

  • Velocity for the layman

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    Rick Tonoli
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    WARNING:This is a brain dump of an idea I’ve been playing around with, some confusion may occur! As a ScrumMaster I often struggle to explain the concept of velocity to people, a critical concept to grasp to understand how to report on progress and capability. I often get these questions thrown at me: How many features…

  • When will we be finished?

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    Rick Tonoli
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    I’m a firm believer that all work should have an agreed end date, but end dates are always a bone of contention and cause endless confusion and wasted arguments and disagreements. These usually hover around the “when will we be finished?” question and, more to the point, no properly defined (empirical) way of working it…

  • gSouthAfrica 2.0 Day 1

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Ok, so gSouthAfrica Day 1 didn’t really grab my interest in the slightest, perhaps the coolest thing I saw was some of the features around Google+ that are either just released (Google Ripples) or planned soon (like the integration with YouTube to add music play lists and share and control these from Plus, although can’t really see…

  • gSouthAfrica 2.0 Hackathon

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    Rick Tonoli
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    Attended the 1st day of gSouthAfrica 2.0 (https://sites.google.com/site/gsouthafrica20/), the second incantation of the Google South Africa conference. The first day was a Hackathon focused on the Google+ API (https://developers.google.com/+/api/) in its current incantation. For me the day was a bit of a let down, the Plus API is severely limited with only the basic ability…

  • My initial experience of the Viewsonic gtablet

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    Rick Tonoli
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    I recently purchased a Viewsonic gtablet (or gtab) and I thought I’d dump some thoughts I had on it for future buyers. Firstly I’m based in South Africa so access to technology like this is, well, lacking. The only “tablet” officially available as of this post, is the Samsung Galaxy Tab (I say “tablet” because…

  • Velvet Intimidation and Thuggery

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    Rick Tonoli
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    In South Africa you hear stories about people brushing against the corruption of the Police but it doesn’t sink in until you actually experience it. Today I was stopped by a pointless roadblock doing nothing more than harassing innocent citizens, checking for expired licenses, expired roadworthy certificates and the likes. Unfortunately my car’s roadworthy certificate…

  • Star Trek, a model for Agility

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    Rick Tonoli
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    As a Trekkie I’m prone to watching reruns of old Star Trek episodes from time to time and I started seeing many similarities between an agile approach to “getting things done” and the way the crew of the Enterprise work. Yes, granted, it’s a militaristic structure but that’s not to say you can’t still be…

  • Google South Africa conference (day 2)

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    Rick Tonoli
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    I’m back in Joburg and I figured I better get around to writing a Day 2 post. Day 2 was, for me anyway, not as interesting as Day 1, but nevertheless worth it (it’s a fault of mine that I’m way too technical and not focused enough on “the other stuff”). It’s focus was mostly…

  • Google South Africa conference (day 1)

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    Rick Tonoli
    in

    Geeks, coffee, sweets and cool music, add that to a lineup of interesting speakers talking about cool technology and you have a recipe for an awesome event. Day 1 of the Google South Africa (g|southafrica) Conference finished a couple of hours ago and it was a pretty cool day. I’ve worked with most of the…