There is a time vampire hiding in your browser. It looks like this: Lately, this one has been annoying me. Instead of relying on gut feeling, I ran a little experiment. I navigated through various well-known websites and web applications — stopwatch at hand. While I navigated, I recorded the time I saw the wait … Read more
In a previous post I wrote about the problem with teams that iterate without a real vision. Without a carefully premeditated direction iterations assure that everybody is busy — but they create a dangerous sense of confidence because we feel fast and nimble. A fly is fast and nimble too. The problem with problem solvers. … Read more
‘Never confuse movement with action.’ Ernest Hemingway Most of us would agree that developing using iterations is essentially safe because fast, consecutive iterations lead naturally to a self-correcting system. But there is danger oversimplifying what iterations can do. For an iterative process to self-correct it must start in the vicinity of the desired outcome or … Read more
I am safe; I am wearing my safety belt! Teenage driver We are fast; we are doing Agile! Management team “The word ‘Agile’ has been subverted to the point where it is effectively meaningless, and what passes for an agile community seems to be largely an arena for consultants and vendors to hawk services and … Read more
No matter how it looks at first, it’s always a people problem. The Secrets of Consulting – Gerald Weinberg (1985) Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Agile Manifesto (2001) Corollary If essentially you are not fixing a people problem, then you are not really solving a problem.
I must confess that, earlier in my career, it always made me anxious to show the end user any incomplete work. As a consultant, it seemed like a silly opportunity to invite scope changes, unwelcome feedback, and basically a drain on my time and energy. It was many years later that I developed the skin … Read more
Often in the past, I would ask something like “is the design ready?” Implicit in this question was the assumption that “design” was just a thing, a piece of meatloaf cooking in the oven that I waited for eagerly. Maybe I was expecting evidence of a “good design” in the form of a nice document … Read more
“Mark has developed most of the solution.” That’s what they told me when I joined the company. It was the last century; I was young and all-knowing back then. The software we were developing would read weight measurements from a precision digital scale connected to a PC. Then, each measurement will be tagged, stored and … Read more
To: All TeamSubject: Kickoff Notes Guiding principles we agreed to: We recognize that achieving 100% perfection is impossible. We will aim for excellence, and we will hold ourselves to high standards: our target is 90% of perfect. To: All TeamSubject: Reminder of our guiding principles We have been at this for a while, perfection is … Read more
“About 20,000 emails,” I’d say rolling my eyes, “that’s how many I get in one year—I counted.” Then I’d plunge into a pool of gloom and commiserate with my colleague about how email is destroying our productivity, our creative time, our personal peace and the global supply of fresh salmon. I’d go on rambling and … Read more