That last bug that came back with another issue. That demo that worked all the way through but blew up right at the end. That sales pitch that was perfect but missed on crucial detail. We can agonize over all the losses, and near-misses, and be almost there or we can get to work on making it happen, bringing it together, and trying again. You are only so close for a little while, and then…
The myth in Agile is that it is meant to make you go faster. It’s not. It’s about working on the right thing, at the right time and delivering value to your customer. It’s about avoiding statements like… “We shipped, but no one is using it.” “No one wanted all this extra stuff.” “It doesn’t do what we thought it was going to do.” Agile is about feedback and validation loops to ensure the right…
It’s been a few weeks but you have already been back to it – the grind. The day in, the day out – moving things along, perhaps pushing a rock up a new hill for a new purpose. But that’s what you are doing. That’s what you are focused on. Not everyone wants to go back to the grind and they will try to push you off. But if you keep going, that’s when you…
Over the past few years, I would ask Product Managers or Business Analysts to send me some sample requirements so I could help out some new people on our team with how to write requirements. If they were using Agile, I’d sometimes get back a response akin to – “Oh we don’t do requirements, we write notes” or “Yeah, I don’t have anything to send you because we don’t have documents on any of it.”…
Proof of Concepts is great, they solve a piece of a problem in an isolated way with minimal investment. The problem with a Proof of Concept (POC) is when they prove the problem and stay there, they don’t get integrated into the mainline. They don’t get incorporated, they go back on the shelf while the problem they were meant to solve goes on and on and on. And then they nag at the team, because…