That is really mind-blowing.

I remember reading Max Havelaar when I was fifteen. During my reading, I was thinking how incredibly fresh and new Multatulis writing was for a book of 150 years old.

And yes, it was an original version (no rewritten copy).

That is a little bit over simplified. We are talking about Germany here. Movies, television series, cartoons, and so on are dubbed in German. The same counts for France were everything is dubbed in French, Spain, Italy, etc. The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are the few european countries were people have to satisfy theirselves with subtitles in their own language.

It is true though that Europeans listen to a lot of english-sang music, but it is far from the only music we listen to. And I do not think that some german 9 year olds will learn a lot of (good) English from the latest Akon or Lady Ga-Ga song

Gawdon Bennet! Crowley crap dang is weird.

Not sure if i' is a "good weird" awer a "bad weird". OK?

Microsoft is the absolute king of the Belgian software market. Especially for government and administration.

In my few years in the Belgian software business I have heard the most mind-numbing arguments from managers to promote yet another stupid Microsoft product over a better or equal equivalent.
"Everybody uses it, so it is better!"
"It is a corporate standard!"
"Outlook has got all sorts of features that others don't!" (this was a remark on my use of Gmail and Google calendar)

Yes, and Australia is on the other side.

... than just a script writer. Amongst many things, he gave Moebius/Jean Giraud the idea of what later became 'The Incal.' Moebius, Giger and Dan O'Bannon were all working on the aborted Dune project of Jodorowsky.

One more for the list!

• First man on the moon -> Louis Armstrong
• Pioneer of capitalism -> John Smith
• First book of the bible -> Guinessis
• Author of Iliad and Odyssey -> Homer Simpson
• Author of the bible -> Gutenberg
• Discovery of radioactivity -> Madman Curie

What I learned from Agile, is that linking "hours" or even worse "man-hours" to tasks or estimates is really bad practice. This is because hours are only a one-sided measure for the workload of a task. A meaningless measure, like task points is often used to overcome these problems.

The iron cross/knight's cross is still in use by the Bundeswehr (German army). As an army related symbol, the iron cross is much older than the Nazi era. It was already in use by the Prussians in their struggle with Napoleonic France.

I do not really understand what you mean by "hours burned." In a stand-up we only talk about tasks you have been working on the previous day, or that you finished the previous day. And then we talk a little about the tasks we will be doing today.

If I understand you correctly, in our stand-up you would have said that you were working on the same task for three days in a row. There is nothing wrong with that. It is only an indication for a scrum master and scrum product owner that your task is a really complex one, or a long one, or that you ran into a problem that you cannot solve.

This is so true. And true on every level. I have seen very wrong implementations of (agile) methodologies on developer level, design and analysis level, project management level and so on.

I can get so depressed and frustrated by this. Because, most of the time, it has nothing to do with the chosen methodology per se, but more with applying simple well-known management solutions.

I think this has to do with how you read and interpret the agile manifesto. The second dogma says:"Working software over comprehensive documentation." And not vs. comprehensive documentation.

I have been in software projects where after 18 months (!) of development we had nothing to show except for tons of documentation and designs. I have also been in scrum driven projects were we had little but very useful documentation.

So, in my book, Agile != no documentation. Agile == make only the documentation that is useful and wanted by the customer.

If your developers are using agile as an excuse, then they are doing it wrong!

I have been a Scrum Product Owner many times, and for sure we had to deliver what we promised. The difference was that our promises were better and more realistic, because the team had the final word in what had to be delivered at the end of an iteration.

And who said you can't apply PMBOK and use an agile method at the same time? Both seem quite compatible to me.

As a catholic, I got a smile on my face when I read this article...

Julius Caesar never was an emperor of Rome. The imperial titles and offices were not created yet. His nephew Octavianus Augustus is considered as the first emperor, because he was the first to hold the titles of Caesar, Augustus, princeps civitatis and princeps senatus.