Running in Circles
notes date: 2018-06-17
source date: 2017-11-21
- People in our industry think they stopped doing waterfall and switched to agile. In reality they just switched to high-frequency waterfall.
Deliberate resource allocation
- Only management can protect attention. Telling the team to focus only works if the business is backing them up.
Mutable requirements
- If a team works to a spec, there’s no point in iterating. The purpose of working iteratively is to change direction as you go.
Uphill Strategies
- Teams that track “velocity” and “story points” treat development as if it’s linear labor. Software development is not like moving a pile of stones.
- Work that requires problem solving is more like a hill. There’s an uphill phase where you figure out what you’re doing. Then when you get to the top you can see down the other side and what it’ll take to finish.
- The uphill work is where you learn what’s hard and what’s possible and make value judgments. Here’s where you make decisions about those mutable requirements because you’re seeing the real costs and opportunities in the implementation. Learning uphill requires the focus and time given to the teams by deliberately allocated resources.