Why You don’t like Sprints

Because they force you to do something you’re not (at least not all of us are accustomed to). Focus and get to the finish line. When you are running, that’s the goal, the finish line – whether the road is bad, it’s raining, there are lots of people – the goal is the same: get to the finish line. And the only way to do that is to focus and move your feet. That focus and that goal are what many sprints are missing when they fail. Get to the goal.

Check Engine Light

Your software needs a “Check Engine” light – it’s getting harder to maintain, it doesn’t work as well as it used to, or it’s hard to understand. Better yet, have an engine light for your team. Does everyone know how our software works and what we do? Do we have a scalable group, and are they growing? It should flash red in your eyes, and like your car make you pause. The problem is we don’t, so we keep driving along until it blows up.  

2 months ago

Greg Thomas

Two Things at Once

You can’t do two things at once, but we’re getting close. I can put Claude to work on a problem while I switch to something else. I’m still not doing two things at once, but it now looks like. But if I have to spend time reviewing and integrating what Claude wrote on a greater scale later on, have I done two things at once? Whether it’s minimal time or not? Are we doing two things at once or are we queuing up future work to review?

2 months ago

Greg Thomas

Adhering to the Schedule

Everything is about consistency and keeping the schedule. If you can do that, you’re aces. The problem is adhering to the schedule – it flips and flops as external circumstances outside of your control invade your precious time as you seek to complete all that is in front of you. So then the question becomes, do you have too much in your schedule to get things done, or are you underestimating the time to get them done? What do you do? I think I will forever be thinking about how to optimize the perfect schedule, when really I just have

2 months ago

Greg Thomas

Reaching the Peak

I don’t know if there is a peak in our careers anymore. (I’m not sure there ever was, I thought you just kept learning and learning and learning). But now, if anything, I see it as climbing to the top of one mountain, getting there, seeing an even higher mountain, and having to climb back down and climb up again. What we thought as the peak of our careers is constantly evolving and changing, picking the right mountain to climb is becoming harder and harder.