January 25, 2023
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 it connects.
January 24, 2023
Team apathy doesn’t hit all at once, it starts slow and builds until one day you wonder how you got here. But there are signs that it might be happening on your team. People start working on “stuff” with no real goal in mind – priority, and severity go out the door. Things become “hard to explain” or “it’s all in their head” – generally because they don’t want to write it down. Customer tickets sit there longer than they used to. There is no such thing as updates on tickets anymore, just done or not done. No one starts
January 23, 2023
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 thing is always being worked on. Going faster is just a by-product of working on the right things that matter.
January 22, 2023
And let’s not start with – it could all blow up in your face and the world could end. If the worst is that the next release might be later but your current release is already on track to be late, then the worst case is that you could have a late release (give or take). We use the “What’s the worst that could happen?” – excuse as a push-off to not doing anything because it sounds ominous and scary when it fact it’s not that bad. The only answer to – “What’s the worst that could happen?” is always
January 21, 2023
Over time, teams stagnate, they become comfortable in what they are, who they are, who is the GOTO, and how things get done. Little things have become embedded processes because “that’s just how we do and there is no point in trying something else”. It’s at this time that the team needs a shakeup, a jolt, a kick to try something new. Perhaps it’s switching people around (Jeff takes on customer tickets this month, Julie moves to back-end dev) or maybe it’s shaking up the overall delivery (let’s focus on shipping weekly vs monthly), whatever it is, the team is
