iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

AI & Agile? I looked at the manifesto. 1st two principles: "Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software." "Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage." um, so: yeah agilemanifesto.org/principles.h...

agilemanifesto.org

Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

alistaircockburn.company.site/Epub-Slice-t... my book title "Slice the problem, grow the solution" came unsolicited from Chatgpt - it used that phrase, I recognized it as capturing what was missing That these cyber intelligence things come back with different words for us to look at is a gift.

alistaircockburn.company.site

Epub: Slice the Problem Grow the Solution, preview ed

A Practical Guide to Fine-Grained Incremental Development. Get more Value from the same amount of Work: less risk, less waste, more predictability. preview edition.

011

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

methodologies in hostile vs friendly territory. few people discuss this:

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

alistaircockburn.company.site/Epub-Simplif... "No-need-to-know really helped remove a huge `case-when` and cyclomatic complexity (FWIW) decreased by 4. The code is soooo much better. This was driven by my XPer agent who does bureaucratic design." (Hemal Varambhia) It's really rewarding to see...

alistaircockburn.company.site

Epub: Simplifying Software Design, preview ed

Sharpen your design using the virtues of bureaucracies: Not My Job and No Need to Know, simple techniques that work with both humans and AI. preview edition.

000

Reposted by T'otherAlistair

Cracked Lemonade @crackedlemonade.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

youtu.be/8lprSmY9Uio?... Red Dwarf has the best Anti Nano machines argument. Like imagine that you have tiny robots inside you and they make everything that's not their branding invisible to you so they can milk you for micro transactions

youtu.be

Red Dwarf 12 - M-Corp

YouTube video by COMIXBOX

221

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This is as close as I got to writing about trust 🙂 Trust is a double-negative: I believe that you won't hurt me. It's not "doing no harm", but "belief in the not doing harm", for all forms of harm (there are many. Given my word limit on that page, this is how I said that ;))

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

lookee - i get to put another one of my poems in my next book :) hahahaha i love that

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

i feel that “psychological safety" is getting too much press these days, so I added this new assertion (that was missing, actually) While important, it's only one of a series of factors in "speaking up” & “getting heard” COmments, criticism, suggestions welcome

023

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

when you hear "scrum doubles the productivity of your team", what you're really hearing is : "The sad fact of the matter is that most organization’s processes are so incredibly inefficient that it is not too hard to get a free 30% in team efficiency by judiciously /

tinyurl.com

Alistair.Cockburn.us | Process: the 4th dimension

100

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The bigger surprise is how useful agile is on a fixed-price contract. I wrote our project experiences in a paper called "Process: The 4th Dimension" :) web.archive.org/web/20140329...

web.archive.org

Alistair.Cockburn.us | Process: the 4th dimension

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

singularics.com/articles/fle... This article by Alex Petty • SCI-F • SPC is the best single article on AI & process/methodology/etc that I have seen to date. Read it, please (and probably all the articles it links to).

singularics.com

Fleet Leadership

The fleet can build anything and remembers nothing. Someone has to carry what the machines cannot.

011

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

But first - I enjoyed writing these 2 pages, trying to lock down why there can't be a master methodology, process or strategy . Also shows the cross linking needed. This has to work in epubs as hot links

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

www.patreon.com/AlistairCock... Back on the theory book - The difficulty is there are 33 assertions, most with a graph or graphic that needs explaining with an external audio or video, and some cross references... Spent the last few days working on that. Some pics below

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Just a note: My work came out of my "anthropological" approach to understanding software teams through the 1990s and my desire to get away from "software is like bridge-building" or "software is like..." anything - my conclusion was that software is its own thing, and in 50 years

patreon.com

111

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

"A small theory of collaborative mental work (including software)" :)) - this book/ xedline will take a long pull to produce see www.patreon.com/AlistairCock... www.patreon.com/AlistairCock... www.patreon.com/AlistairCock... www.patreon.com/AlistairCock...

patreon.com

My first XedLine 'book' about to start :) | Alistair Cockburn, Writer

My next book experiment will be a 'XedLine', a cross-media 'book'. Had the idea first in 2010, couldn't manage to get a good topic nor the t

100

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

music.youtube.com/watch?v=8-21... occasionally, there is a song so simple, it makes no sense how it hits. Little Clubthing's "Sadness" is one. So few notes, but chills running up and down my spine - makes me want to cry and listen on repeat at the same time music.youtube.com/watch?v=8-21...

music.youtube.com

Little Clubthing - Sadness

YouTube video by Erkek Bahaneleri

010

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

youtu.be/6o6Zf9vVl3w 4th in A small theory of collaborative mental work Comm effectiveness drops as you lose body language, voice, drawing, cross-modality timing, question and answer. (p.s. watch for fragments of the xedline to show up here and at www.patreon.com/c/AlistairCo...)

youtu.be

A4: Communication effectiveness drops as you lose channels of communication

YouTube video by totheralistair

010

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

youtu.be/S2YEO0DXrJ8 A small theory of collaborative mental work (including software development). 3rd:Trust is sensitive to the frequency and richness of the communication between people. Frequency drops rapidly with distance. watch for here and at www.patreon.com/c/AlistairCo...

youtu.be

A3: frequency drops with distance

YouTube video by totheralistair

020

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

2nd vid in the xedline A small theory of collaborative mental work: youtu.be/5lU8n8Tktlw see also Patreon: www.patreon.com/AlistairCock...

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

i think i’m making progress - it’s easy to write these books - it’s hard to write them in a way that others can read and take action out of. …. that’s why the vids will be so important. Here are the assertions and structuring of them, for your consideration. www.patreon.com/AlistairCock...

patreon.com

The theory book, sorting the assertions | Alistair Cockburn, Writer

i think i’m making progress - it’s easy to write these books - it’s hard to write them in a way that others can read and take action out of.

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

test 1, xedline voice over a graph www.loom.com/share/061812... this video is obviously not ready for prime time viewing, but you can see where I'm heading. will probably delete it once I get to the final technique. Next will be paper, i suspect will work better, will post later

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Just uploaded the 1st video of the xedline "A small theory of collaborative mental work (including software development)" www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZ_V... It's the same thing I put into the book part, but I think works better with the voiceover. Comments welcome at all levels, thanks,

youtube.com

A1: People inventing, communicating, deciding...

YouTube video by totheralistair

010

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Those are they. That's the whole thing.

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I'm so stoked about this I can hardly wait - i've been after this since 2011, finally getting aaround to doing it for real :) .... i only learn new technology to solve a problem i'm facing - this theory book is a gnarly problem. Xedlines addresses that. Loving this experiment.

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

i'm still grooving on these two pics of planning an org transformation of whatever form :)

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Crzy book by the Hamming of Hamming codes - the man knows his stuff. Book very hit and miss by my anticipation, but occasional gems like this that make it worth reading to find.

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

My next book experiment will be a 'XedLine', a cross-media 'book'. Had the idea first in 2010, couldn't manage to get a good topic nor the technology (That's when HTML 5 and PDFs both allowed embeddd videos ... but the suckers moving technology never developed it, /

120

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Idea from Mark Eddleston's new book in progress newwaysofworking.substack.com Drawing by ChatGPT - I like the pencil content and drawing style but like the colored pigeon's eyes best :) which do you prefer?

110

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Love this note (LLM->Hexagonal): "AI could determine safety purely by checking which methods were called by each consumer - no need to trace through the transitive dependency graph The port boundary turned into a fast, mechanical check instead of a deep investigation."

210

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

don't know if i'm playing with fire to see if I can get any information from them... :))

001

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

yessss, it made it out :) www.amazon.com/dp/B0H93BJG6...

010

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

trying to get that 6pt text on the spine to fit KDP's rules: and then they print it a bit off anyway, because they're sloppy and they don't care.

100

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

problem w OneDrive on Mac, Chat and I have been chasing it for 4 days these were cheery phrases at first, now annoying: The smoking gun --- This is a very satisfying result --- The point where guessing stops ... "There's just one more thing I want to check"

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

the 4th day in a row that Chat says, "That explains everything", alternating with "That is very revealing information" on the same problem topic. sighcrylol

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

back on this book - these next two, theory of collab work and PM strategies, are both going to be difficult

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

some pages for your browsing pleasure

001

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

working to get the Guest Leadership book out Kindle on Amazon lnkd.in/eqcemXuh I added a page in the latest upload. On my site $7, w latest updates: lnkd.in/eRZ_6Kz3 Amzn paper is under review (probably fails font size on the cover spine, that's hard to get right)

020

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

got this little recording device "Pocket" see heypocket.com nice size, recording might be ok, but the AI is useless. Supposed to transcribe, showing speaker changes, mind map, summary all of those complete junk. So: just a cute transcribing recorder. Now looking for tools to work with that output

110

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

could use a little help from my friends here: just got this email, it's very nice - i normally run suspicious, but can't find anything wrong with this request/offer. Anybody find the catch? Anything wrong here, or go with it?

100

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

yes, we know it's just a statistical prediction answering algorithm, and yet it used 'curious', 'optimistic', 'what I expected', and kept track of time (total time 3 hours and got 2/3 the problem done.)

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

"Out of your Head Press" :) The publishing house I tried starting in 2011. Loved the idea, still do

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

throwback to my days in formal specifications ;) there's a bridge to be built, across a chasm, with formalists on one side and regular practitioners on the other ... i worked from the formalist side for a few years and concluded that building from that side would never reach to the other.

100

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Im' telling you, "not my job" and "no need to know" are the tightest evaluation advice i've seen. Crazy.

000

T'otherAlistair @totheralistair.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Guest leadership, the book: www.amazon.com/gp/product/B... lovely note, i'm looking forward to this.. (a small amount of LLM telltale, but not bad)

020