Mike Bowler

In the days that we wrote user stories on physical cards, we deliberately handed out small pieces of paper and large sharpies. We deliberately wanted fewer words on the card.

People who write stories in systems like Jira often miss that point. Those tools allow us to write novels, and so we do.

I wrote about risk management, illustrated with a hike through grizzly bear country. improvingflow.com/2025/07/27/r...

One of the mistakes we make is assuming that people will make logical and rational decisions to optimize for the perfect overall outcome.

I wrote about this, with an example from a recent hiking trip at unconsciousagile.com/2025/08/05/o...

Helmcken Falls in #WellsGrayProvincialPark. One of the tallest in Canada, with a drop of 140m

Warning sign with a picture of a Grizzly Bear and the text: “Group access. By law, you must hike in a group of four or more beyond this point”

All great adventures start with a warning.

We did a guided bear biology hike yesterday, at #GlacierNationalPark. Highly recommended, even if we didn’t see any actual grizzlies.
parks.canada.ca/pn-np/bc/glaci…

The first 17 photos here are from this hike.
flickr.com/photos/mbowler/

So many butterflies in Black Mountain today. #kelowna #canada

When I talk to teams about their goals, I'm continually surprised how often the answer is framed as "meets our deadlines" rather than "delights our customers".

We get what we focus on. Perhaps we should have better goals.

I'm talking about what I've observed. I've been programming for forty years and coaching and training programmers for twenty and there are some patterns that I see over and over. Both in myself and in the people around me.

That's fair. I live in a country where it's illegal to call yourself an engineer if you aren't formally trained in engineering so it tends to be a hot button here.

Are you assuming that programming is engineering? Very few programmers have any training in engineering. Few understand any but the simplest stats. They do all have a grasp of logic, although in many cases, that’s intuitive without any formal training.

iNaturalist iNaturalist is a social network for naturalists! Record your observations of plants and animals, share them with friends and researchers, and learn about the natural world.

Whenever the subject of identifying birds comes up, someone will recommend Merlin (I use it too), however I don't see many recommendations for apps to identify plants, and other animals. Let me recommend iNaturalist, which I use for identifying everything else. www.inaturalist.org

Sometimes when we facilitate a meeting, it's impossible to get anyone to talk, and this makes the meeting a complete waste. I was asked again this week how to deal with this situation.
unconsciousagile.com/2024/03/11/p...

Juvenile great horned own sitting on a branch. The white baby feathers are still visible, making it look soft around the edges. It's looking straight at the camera.

It was apparently four years ago today that I took this baby picture in the forest. #GreatHornedOwl #Kelowna

In my newsletter this week, I wrote about why rewriting large software applications, rather than fixing them in place, is almost always a mistake. It's now also on my blog at agiletechnicalexcellence.com/2025/06/25/t...

How many things do we have like this, that actively discourage us from doing the right thing?

Whereas if I can make that little refactoring and directly check it into mainline then it’s a very low effort change that contributes to the quality of the product. It’s become easy to do the right thing.

If I want to rename a method to make it clearer and know that making that little change is going to require real effort to go through a review process and manual merges, then I’m more likely to decide to just live with the original name, even if it is is poor.

What we don’t talk about as much is how a culture of branching and Pull Requests (PR’s) actively discourages making small changes for that purpose.

If you see duplication in the code, then remove that before you leave the method. If you see poor variable names then fix those before you leave.

We often talk about the scouting rule of “always leave the campsite cleaner than you found it”, or in a software context “always leave the code a little bit better than you found it”.

The theme for the week seems to be a focus on quality so let's look at some aspects of that.
1. Focusing on testing when we should be focusing on quality
2. About bugs
3. How pull-requests really aren't a quality step, most of the time

agiletechnicalexcellence.com/2025/06/17/q...

I did a session at Agile Open Canada last week where I ran people through a LEGO exercise on "technical debt" and then talked about the neuroscience of why this is a more effective way of teaching that concept, rather than using code examples. Now blogged at: unconsciousagile.com/2025/06/03/i...

Programming really took off in part because it was inexpensive to get started. I remember inexpensive languages from Borland and others when I was starting. Then later, open source tooling. Now AI is pushing it back the other way. Can't code unless you spend money, and that price will only go up.

Yet, as counterintuitive as it sounds, it's at these open space events that I find the best learning. I find these far more useful than formal conferences, although I do still go to both.

Wherever you are in the world, there are likely open space events being run near you. Check one out.

Participants will then share the things that they're most excited about, and conversations could go in almost any direction.

If you've never attended an open space event like this then it may sound very counterintuitive. With the exception of the high level theme (AI this year), we don't know what topics will be covered at the event until we arrive on the first day.

I think this is my fourth time at this particular event and I've been to dozens of similar open spaces over the years.

These are often called "coach camps" although it's valuable to far more people than just coaches and that's why this particular event now calls themselves the "Agile Open".

The town of Banff, Canada, surrounded by rugged, snow capped mountains. The photo is taken from the top of one of the mountains looking down towards the town.

This week I was at Agile Open Canada in Banff, for another spectacular open space event.

This picture was from dinner one evening, looking down at the town of Banff, where the event had been held.

Brown coloured black-bear looking at the camera.

I see black bears maybe three or four times a year and this may be the largest one I’ve ever seen.

Colorful sunset over a snowy scene. Burned trees still standing from a forest fire, 20 years earlier.

The photo below is one of my favourite sunset shots. It’s also a sharp reminder of a mistake I made that could have had serious consequences. It’s a time that I should have quit and didn’t.

Full story at unconsciousagile.com/2025/05/20/k...