Mike Bowler
@mikebowler.ca
Helping organizations improve how they deliver value for over 25 years. Using a mix of agile technical practices (XP), workflow design, and applied psychology/neuroscience. When not doing any of that, he can often be found in the woods with a camera.
JiraMetrics v3.0 is out. It's a free command-line tool that turns Jira history into agile metrics charts (cycle time, aging WIP, throughput) as one HTML report. A major release because it now requires Ruby 3.4 and removes long-deprecated features. Full change log at jirametrics.org/changes/
I've been releasing short daily videos on the neuroscience and psychology behind why people behave the way they do (anxiety, avoidance, habits, decision-making, and more). 27 so far and growing. Index here so you can start wherever feels relevant: videos.mikebowler.ca
I'm going to be in Toronto the week of May 18 to keynote at CTO Craft Con and sticking around a bit -- reach out if you're there and want to chat psychology of teams and we should get coffee! 🙂 I'm always running a packed schedule these days so will have to see but I don't know who I know there!
Imagine that you see your child precariously picking up a glass of water and you shout at them “don’t spill that!!”. You know what’s next; water all over the floor.
Today I sent out the 50th issue of my weekly newsletter. If you aren't already subscribed then take a look at what you missed. Maybe it's time to subscribe now. files.gargoylesoftware.com/newsletter/
At the API level, Jira treats Team Managed boards quite differently than Company Managed boards. I've learned more about that so I've updated my article on the board API. blog.mikebowler.ca/2024/04/17/j...
JiraMetrics v2.22 has been released. Lots of subtle improvements specifically for Scrum boards, and general bug fixes. Full changelog at jirametrics.org/changes/ What is this? If you use Jira and want actionable insights into your data, this open source tool will give you that.
It was three years ago today that I took this photo. It's one of my favourite sunset photos and is 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. unconsciousagile.com/2025/05/20/k...
Nothing quite like digging into a poorly designed API to bring out the sarcasm. Today, I dig into the Jira API to get sprint data. agiletechnicalexcellence.com/2026/01/29/j...
Goodhart’s Law says that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Frequently when I talk about that, everyone nods their heads and then immediately makes a target out of the measures they’re looking at. Continued at improvingflow.com/2026/01/20/g...
Goodharts Law
Goodhart’s Law says that “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
improvingflow.com
As you've undoubtedly picked up by now, I talk a lot about neuroscience, psychology, hypnosis, body language, etc as they relate to Agile methods. I'm frequently asked what books I recommend as an introduction, so I maintain a list, and I've just updated it again unconsciousagile.com/2021/06/13/r...
Book recommendations for Agile Coaches
I talk a lot about neuroscience, psychology, hypnosis, body language, and other topics as they relate to Agile methods and I’m frequently asked: “What books do you recommend as an introduction?” There...
unconsciousagile.com
When faced with the question of “when will we be done?”, the most factually accurate answer we can give is one from a probabilistic forecast. Yet counter-intuitively, despite being the most correct answer, it’s not what people want. They want a deterministic answer, even if it’s less accurate.
Here's a deal for you: My book, Software Estimation Without Guessing - Effective Planning in an Imperfect World 40% off with code INSIGHT at checkout. pragprog.com/titles/gdest...
Growth vs Fixed mindsets and how AI is reinforcing the wrong one. unconsciousagile.com/2026/01/05/g...
Today, January 4, is World Hypnosis Day. If you’re like most people, all you know about hypnosis is what you’ve seen on TV or in movies, and while entertaining, that’s mostly wrong.
The things I write about here are a great examples of Explicit Knowledge. They're things that can be easily taught through the written word or perhaps in a video. Then there is Tacit Knowledge that can only be learned through experience and I wrote about that: unconsciousagile.com/2025/12/05/t...
Tacit knowledge
When I was a teenager, I read a book called Juggling for the Complete Klutz, which seemed just perfect for me. It came with three bean bag balls, and instructions on how to use them.
unconsciousagile.com
Who had "adversarial poetry as an attack vector for AI" on their 2025 bingo card? arxiv.org/html/2511.15...
Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models
arxiv.org
Social media is often a firehose. If you like the things I write and don't want to miss any of them, then sign up for my free email newsletter at the link below. As a bonus, you'll get a copy of my video course Flow Metrics Basics. funnel.gargoylesoftware.com/newsletter
improvement newsletter
Gargoyle Software
funnel.gargoylesoftware.com
I heard “It’s easier to get things done when there is a deadline”, and that tells me something about motivation, or more specifically, lack of it.
If you've ever taken one of my classes then there's a good chance you know what I mean when I say "sometimes we just need to pick up the fax machine". If you haven't heard this one yet, then buckle up for a crazy story. unconsciousagile.com/2025/11/18/j...
Sometimes we just need to pick up the fax machine
My friend Dave once got brought in to help with a large project. The company was purchasing a large fax system from a vendor and then planned to extensively customize it to work in their environment.
unconsciousagile.com
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) released a great case study on how they used LEGO® Serious Play® to do threat modeling around digital identity. I've written about that here: unconsciousagile.com/2025/11/11/L...
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...
Risk Management
Yesterday I went on a guided hike to teach people how to safely hike through bear country. Specifically grizzy bear country. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any bears, but we did learn an amazing amount ...
improvingflow.com
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
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/
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.
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
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.
inaturalist.org
