And some final fixes

Author: marcusoftnet

_posts/2014-01-27-repost-the-time-when-we-did-lean-backwards.md

@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ I noticed that [CodeBetter](http://codebetter.com/marcushammarberg/) is slowing
 
 A couple of months ago I was very fortunate to work alongside a great team. They had a not so envious task before them, namely to introduce a new main concept into an legacy code base. You know, the code has been around for at least 5 years and now you need to add a concept that was no-one ever thought we would have in there.
 
-They did that. In just 3-4 months and delivered with flying colours. I didn’t have much to do with that, I merely observed their work.
+They did that. In just 3-4 months and delivered with flying colors. I didn’t have much to do with that, I merely observed their work.
 
 When they were done I proudly introduced the team to a new senior in the company and told him about their feat and how they had gone about doing it. His words: well, *that’s Lean backwards then*.
 

_posts/2016-09-14-that-will-not-work-here-and-toyota-kata-mindset.md

@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ I cannot count the number times I've heard things like:
 * Our role is defined in this way - we can't change it
 * This is how we source (brrr…) resources (brrr…. even more) in this company - it's in the contract
 * This process is like this by law. You cannot change it.
-* If we're going to resolve prioritisation problems like these we need the chairman of the board in the room
+* If we're going to resolve prioritization problems like these we need the chairman of the board in the room
 
 Except for the two "brrr"'s above these are quotes, said by smart people in organizations that want to "become agile" according to their strategic goals.
 

_posts/2016-10-03-big-room-planning---a-failure-testatment-i-like.md

@@ -27,13 +27,13 @@ In order to prepare for the meeting we have held a lot of preparation meetings:
 
 * A few just to set up the preparing
 * One introduction meeting with everyone involved
-* One prioritisation meeting to get the backlog in order
+* One prioritization meeting to get the backlog in order
 * One meeting with product owners to clarify what is required from them during the meeting
 * And a number of individual conversations
 
-All in all most of these meetings has been good and useful, especially the prioritisation meeting that was needed to get the backlog in a good shape and prioritized so that we knew which items of the backlog, that was going to be addressed in the planning meeting.
+All in all most of these meetings has been good and useful, especially the prioritization meeting that was needed to get the backlog in a good shape and prioritized so that we knew which items of the backlog, that was going to be addressed in the planning meeting.
 
-We then held the meeting itself, involving about 25-30 people in our teams and ca 20-25 people from groups around us that we need to get our stuff out of the door. Some of these people were high-ranking people that (in case) we needed to resolve prioritisation issues and dependencies.
+We then held the meeting itself, involving about 25-30 people in our teams and ca 20-25 people from groups around us that we need to get our stuff out of the door. Some of these people were high-ranking people that (in case) we needed to resolve prioritization issues and dependencies.
 
 Today I've spent the better part of 8 hours trying to summarize and document what was said during the meeting. I'm not quite done yet so maybe a few hours more before it's done.
 

_posts/2017-02-22-comments-on-board-practices.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ If we left them in the column (see [the part on fixing below](https://www.marcus
 
 >There's 3 items blocked in testing, 1 in development and 1 in deployment.
 
-That sends much more information and can actually helps us to both do some intelligent prioritisation but also start to reflect on why items often tend to block in "Test", for example.
+That sends much more information and can actually helps us to both do some intelligent prioritization but also start to reflect on why items often tend to block in "Test", for example.
 
 Thirdly - moving the sticky to the blocked-column doesn't convey any information about the blockage itself; what is it, how is the resolution of the blockage going, or how long we have been working on this.
 

_posts/2017-02-24-comments-on-board-practices-4.md

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ---
 layout: post
-title: "Comments on common board practices - Colours speaks volumes. Use colours wisely"
+title: "Comments on common board practices - colors speaks volumes. Use colors wisely"
 author: "Marcus Hammarberg"
 date: 2017-02-24 15:13:13
 tags:
@@ -9,63 +9,63 @@ tags:
  - Scrum
 ---
 
-One of the things that always catches my attention when I walk past a board is the colours of the stickies. Why? Because colours requests our attention and *can* help us in understanding more about a thing. Red is naturally a warning (in western culture at least), green feels ok, etc.
+One of the things that always catches my attention when I walk past a board is the colors of the stickies. Why? Because colors requests our attention and *can* help us in understanding more about a thing. Red is naturally a warning (in western culture at least), green feels ok, etc.
 
-This is why I get troubled when I hear that the reason that we have chosen the colours of the stickies on our board is "because we took the ones that was closest to us".
+This is why I get troubled when I hear that the reason that we have chosen the colors of the stickies on our board is "because we took the ones that was closest to us".
 
 That is sad and I share a few thoughts on how to improve on that state of mind - it's easy.
 
 {% include boardpractice-posts.md %}
 
 <!-- excerpt-end -->
 
-## Colours of (not only) the stickies
+## colors of (not only) the stickies
 
 Take a look that these stickies:
 
 ![Different coloured stickies](/img/boardWithMulitColorStickies.jpg)
 
 The first thing that pops into my head when I see this is: Why is that one orange? How do you act differently on yellow vs blue? Blue?! Isn't that hard to read? Etc. etc.
 
-I make no claim to be an expert on why colours are important and how we act on them, that is a huge topic that I'm not qualified to even start to explain.
+I make no claim to be an expert on why colors are important and how we act on them, that is a huge topic that I'm not qualified to even start to explain.
 
-However - I know that colours on a board (not only stickies) catch my attention and makes me think about why a certain sticky has a certain color, and what I'm supposed to do with that information.
+However - I know that colors on a board (not only stickies) catch my attention and makes me think about why a certain sticky has a certain color, and what I'm supposed to do with that information.
 
 ## Why do I comment on this?
 
-The reason I often come to think about this is that the colours used on a board is in most cases (Marcus-verified data) based on the distance to the pack of stickies. That is teams just pick up any of the stickies that happens to lie close to them.
+The reason I often come to think about this is that the colors used on a board is in most cases (Marcus-verified data) based on the distance to the pack of stickies. That is teams just pick up any of the stickies that happens to lie close to them.
 
 So on the board above:
 
 * Organge doesn't mean a thing - it just what I wrote on at the time
 * Blue happened to be what I had on my desktop when I wrote it
 * I wrote the other on yellow so I thought I'd write this on red ones.
 
-To my this is wasteful - colours will speak to us wether we intend to or not. For that reason we should be a little more deliberate in how we choose the colours we are using on our board.
+To my this is wasteful - colors will speak to us wether we intend to or not. For that reason we should be a little more deliberate in how we choose the colors we are using on our board.
 
 ## What to fix/do instead?
 
 This is **very** easy to fix on the surface - but can be used to be a little bit more advanced. I'll explain in easiness order
 
-### Remove all colours you're not using
+### Remove all colors you're not using
 
-This is so simple to do and helps a lot: make sure that only the colours you are using is lying around where the board is.
+This is so simple to do and helps a lot: make sure that only the colors you are using is lying around where the board is.
 
-Seriously - do it now. Go to your board and just remove all colours but the pale yellow one (for example). Stash them far away from the board and leave piles upon pile with same coloured stickies around.
+Seriously - do it now. Go to your board and just remove all colors but the pale yellow one (for example). Stash them far away from the board and leave piles upon pile with same coloured stickies around.
 
 I sometimes even create a nice little box with board tools that holds these stickies (and others):
 
 ![Box with tools, and only the 'correct' coloured stickies](/img/boardToolBox.jpg)
 
 There! You have improved the easy-to-ready-iness of the board with about 78,6%. All the new stickies will now be pale-yellow.
 
-### Use colours to help us to know what to do
+### Use colors to help us to know what to do
 
-Why is it a good idea to use different coloured stickies in the first place? Because they will tell us that things are different from each other somehow - colours is a really nice way to do that.
+Why is it a good idea to use different coloured stickies in the first place? Because they will tell us that things are different from each other somehow - colors is a really nice way to do that.
 
 It can also help us know how to act and behave differently with different type of work. You could say that there's different policies for how we are going to treat work of a certain class, known as classes of service, see chapter 8 of [Kanban In Action](http://bit.ly/theKanbanBook).
 
-My recommendation is to use different colours to do just that; know what to do with the work at hand. I've often seen teams use different colours for work that is going to be prioritized and worked on in the same way. It either ends in confusion or that we stop using different colours.
+My recommendation is to use different colors to do just that; know what to do with the work at hand. I've often seen teams use different colors for work that is going to be prioritized and worked on in the same way. It either ends in confusion or that we stop using different colors.
 
 In the great book [How to measure anything](https://www.marcusoft.net/2014/12/what-ive-learned-from-how-to-measure-anything.html) Dr Hubbard says something along the lines:
 
@@ -75,44 +75,44 @@ He then goes on and ask great question to help to know if it's a good idea to me
 
 > What decisions are we going to make differently based of this metric - and how
 
-I think that's a really good question to ask about colours on our stickies too; sure we'll write everything from Department X on green stickies - but why? Are we going to prioritize them over other things? Are they to be handled with any special attention?
+I think that's a really good question to ask about colors on our stickies too; sure we'll write everything from Department X on green stickies - but why? Are we going to prioritize them over other things? Are they to be handled with any special attention?
 
 If not - I say it's better to write them on normal color. Until we know if and how we are going to behave differently with them.
 
 ### Start simple
 
-This is related to my advice above. Start as simple as possible. I have been dong kanban for more than 6 years now and rarely met teams that truly have the need for more than 3 colours.
+This is related to my advice above. Start as simple as possible. I have been dong kanban for more than 6 years now and rarely met teams that truly have the need for more than 3 colors.
 
-Typically you need only 2 colours of stickies:
+Typically you need only 2 colors of stickies:
 
 * **Normal** - pale yellow is normal choice for this type of work. It's also easy to use since that color is abundant and commonly present too. It's also a very bland color, just as this is just normal attention needed.
 * **prioritized, expedite or urgent** - red or pink is a normal choice for this work since that signals urgency (in most cultures). Make it stand out from whatever color your normal work has.  It's easy to find in most stores
 
-There can of course be more fine-grained prioritisation needed but I've often found that it can be handled with the order of the stickies in the columns (top more important - lower less important).
+There can of course be more fine-grained prioritization needed but I've often found that it can be handled with the order of the stickies in the columns (top more important - lower less important).
 
-But, by all means, use as many colours you need. It's your board. I recommend you to start with two colours and add more as you see the need. Learning new behavior takes some time. Don't introduce more than one new colour / policy at the time.
+But, by all means, use as many colors you need. It's your board. I recommend you to start with two colors and add more as you see the need. Learning new behavior takes some time. Don't introduce more than one new colour / policy at the time.
 
 ### Make a legend
 
 Tying into that last comment I very often found it useful to create little legend with a description of what each colour mean.
 
 ![Color legend](/img/stickyLegend.jpg)
 
-(Yes - this team used different colours than I suggested above.)
+(Yes - this team used different colors than I suggested above.)
 
-It's a quick, visual and in your face reminder of what we said about the colours and the policies.
+It's a quick, visual and in your face reminder of what we said about the colors and the policies.
 
-### Use the same colours that other teams are using
+### Use the same colors that other teams are using
 
-For extra point and clarity for other around you start to use a standard set of colours among your teams. This people that walks around from board to board can very easily understand, themselves, what is going on and what needs attention etc.
+For extra point and clarity for other around you start to use a standard set of colors among your teams. This people that walks around from board to board can very easily understand, themselves, what is going on and what needs attention etc.
 
 If this works most questions about a teams status can actually be answered by simply look at the board. Even very in-frequent visitors can understand the board with little or no explanation. This is further helped by the legend mentioned above.
 
 If you need help get started there's a set of standard stickies suggested in [David Anderssons seminal book on Kanban](https://www.amazon.com/Kanban-Successful-Evolutionary-Technology-Business/dp/0984521402). We also wrote about this in [Kanban In Action](http://bit.ly/theKanbanBook)
 
 ## Summary
 
-Colours helps us to classify and understand work better. Do better than just picking up the sticky closest to you. Use colours deliberately. It's a quick fix that will help you and your team a lot.
+colors helps us to classify and understand work better. Do better than just picking up the sticky closest to you. Use colors deliberately. It's a quick fix that will help you and your team a lot.
 
 If you liked this post there's more posts on the topic below