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There is only so much you can tell someone how something can improve, and I find it a much more effective technique showing them and doing it with them, and explaining the benefits that they can get. Take the following white board exercise for example (text has been blurred on purpose).

From this…

to this…

and so much more to go!

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Al is having a brief visit, and what better way to welcome him to London than to take him to the heart of the Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown. Ben, Michelle and my sister accompanied us to tuck into a great dim sum feast, even though it took us a long time queuing to get a table. Service was poorer than normal because of the crazy number of people that just continually flowed through the restaurant’s doors but was made up for easily by the traditional dancing lions entering the restaurant to bring good luck to the place.

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Last night, Kath and I watched Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” play at St Martin’s Theatre. London has been showing this play since 1952 and it is the longest running one out of all west end plays.

The story is a combination of elements to form a typical Agatha Christie murder mystery - a guest lodge isolated from the rest of society by deep snow drifts, filled with guests, most anticipated and another who turned up out of the blue. There is a murderer on the loose and a policeman shows up predicting the murder of two more people, both linked somehow to the person who was murdered the previous day. A character finds the phone line cut and tension builds as the play slowly unveils a common thread linking several of them together in these suspicious circumstances. As per predictions, another of the characters finds one of the members of the household murdered and further hostilities ensue, as each member’s potential for being the murderer is uncovered.

The play introduced each character marvellously and you get a strong idea of the nature of each character very early on. The entire cast performed brilliantly in each of their roles, with perhaps the only misgiving being the stronger English accent coming from the man that was supposed to be Italian. I could not guess the ending of this play, and in true murder mystery fashion, can also not give it away. The Mousetrap is a legend on London’s west end and despite being the butt of many jokes and comics is definitely worth watching when you get a chance.

The Kua.com Rating: 9 out of 10

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It’s nice to have days like these in winter…

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Velocity in an XP sense is a historical rate of “work completed” per iteration. Measuring and using velocity is powerful because:

• Planning based on actual velocity figures gives you a more realistic plan than depending on the optimistic/pessimistic estimates of developers;
• It is generally cheaper to work out how much time work really takes, than spending excessive time attempting to guess how much it will;
• Dramatic changes in the number give greater visibility to issues a team may be having;
• The rate indicates if a deliverable is on track, or if scope needs to be re-negotiated.

A fixed velocity is unrealistic because in the real world as there is always a force working against it… friction. Project friction takes on a number of forms including:

• Communication breakdown – Sometimes it’s difficult to get answers from the business, or maybe team members forget to tell each other important things that take up time as people find out issues.
• Environmental Issues – Development environments are never perfect and as you depend on more and more external resources, the team faces additional risk not being able to complete a story because of a database or server is down.
• Ineffective Iteration Planning – Poor quality story cards slipped by the Iteration Manager and required excessive time going back and forth trying to work needed doing, or the third party prerequisite never came through.
• Constrained Resources – Depending on key members for particular tasks can be an effective way for ensuring good productivity, but team members can be ill, or be required for other things. Bringing on new people should affect a team’s velocity in some manner.

Keep in mind the following list of things you may experience when you have a fixed velocity:

• Planning based on an inaccurate number is like setting yourself potentially unrealisable goals instead of the more useful forecasting you can do with a real velocity measurement.
• You lose major visibility into issues affecting the team, making it more difficult to identify and address them.
• The importance of maintaining the magic number adds another opposing force typically misaligned to the core business objective. You lose all sorts of things such as a sustainable pace (read more about the 40 hour week and the need for slack time), a reduction in quality of output leading to additional maintenance or a poor user experience, and more accounting games as iterations lengths or other numbers are “adjusted” to continue the facade of a fixed velocity.

Like most things in an agile process, velocity is one of those metrics that provides another feedback mechanism to help you plan and identify places where you might benefit from change. Use real world numbers to help you, instead of the artificial ones that handcuff you.

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London is one of those places where I would not expect to find any BBQ cooking, not withstanding any of those American chains that serve an average affair. After a bit of research I uncovered a few little gems and so, this weekend, I went to Bodean’s BBQ in Soho for lunch.

As you walk in the door, their ground floor does not appear like your typical London restaurant, with the long tables surrounded by rotating high chairs and retro diner-like decorations making it feel like a casual American diner. Downstairs holds more table seating and they serve food with proper table services, opposed to the cafeteria and take away style upstairs. A number of TVs show American basketball and NHL most days and the rest of the décor, though not fancy, is extremely well suited for this place.

The food on offer is what you would expect for a BBQ smoke house restaurant including BBQ baby back ribs, pork spare ribs, beef back ribs, BBQ chicken, Jamaican Jerk Chicken, Pulled Pork and Beef Brisket. They also serve a number of other American foods like Buffalo Wings and Clam Chowder. I ordered the half slab of baby back ribs that were both deliciously tender and quite filling. The best thing about this restaurant is their own brand of hickory smoked BBQ sauce, with each table equipped with at least one bottle for easy access.

Details: Bodean’s BBQ Smoke House
Found on: 10 Poland Street/16 D’Arblay Street, London, W1F 8PZ (Soho) and 169 Clapham High Street, London, SW4 7SS (Clapham)
Contactable on: 020 287 0506 (Soho) 020 7622 4248 (Clapham)
Highlights: Good place for American ribs and their distinctly branded BBQ sauce
The Kua Rating: 7.5 out of 10

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Gastropubs have become one of the more popular places to eat in London, with an emphasis on high quality ingredients presented in a distinctive manner but typically served at finer restaurants. London has an abundance of these dining places, a reflection on the importance that both good food and the pub culture have to the city. It was only fair that, when our fellow Australians (and honourary US residents) Gerrod and Kristy visited us, we take them to experience a reasonable one, and so we had dinner at The Academy, a gastropub nestled in the streets of Notting Hill.

The Academy is not overly large, decorated more to be a restaurant than your typical London pub. It has a small room out back with tables and a long but rather narrow bar out front, accompanied by a roaring fireplace at the entrance. The quality of food was exceptional and the price of the main meals (ranging from £8-£12) was reasonable for the food on offer. Desserts are comparatively more expensive, with many of them almost half to a third of a main, but is worth it if you are feeling indulgent.

A consequence of its reasonable prices and excellent menu offerings is that the people who dine at this place are a little more silver-lined and sedate, but also reassured me that the visit was worthwhile. The only downside to this gastropub is that it does not prohibit smoking in their dining room, meaning you might have an awful night depending on who your neighbours for the night are.

Details: The Academy
Found on: 57 Princedale Road, Notting Hill, W11 4NP
Contactable on: 020 7221 0248
Highlights: Excellent food at reasonable prices in a little bit of a classier atmosphere than your typical pub.
Room for improvement: Could have a separate area for non-smokers and beer prices were a little more expensive than your average pub.
The Kua Rating: 8 out of 10

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Last night I went to see the Blue Man Group (BMG) at the New London Theatre. I find it very difficult to describe the show the BMG puts on other than very original. The show, best categorised as performance art more than theatre, is composed of a series of skits and musical performances that are richly visual involving various types of mime, percussion and illusion. At the centre of each of the skits are three men covered in blue-coloured masks. Their generally expressionless faces would easily be recognised by most people since they fetured in a number of Intel ads several years ago.

Throughout the show I was either laughing or just simply stunned by the visual richness each skit contained. The show is not cheap at £40 but is something that no one else is capable of executing as well as them.

TheKua Rating: 9 out of 10.

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