The no-iteration iteration
We were stuck.
There we were, a few iterations into new product development, and there was still no deliverable.
business
Getting "on board" with Agile
Someone asked this recently on LinkedIn:
What are some good ways in which to most quickly transition from a waterfall environment to an agile environment in such a way that (most) everyone gets on board with the transition?
My response went something like this.
By far the most common reason why development teams don’t get “on board” with Agile, in my experience, is that management isn’t on board either.
How To Make The Whole Organization Agile – Forbes
Source: How To Make The Whole Organization Agile – Forbes
This thing here, from veteran management guy Steve Denning–it’s Forbes, so of course there has to be an infographic that makes less sense than just explaining things.
All mockery aside, I’m seeing an important point here. The lowest-functioning corporations depend on coercion, threats, and “fiat” to get stuff done. If you’re a little more sophisticated and higher functioning, you evolve into “management tools” that aren’t so dependent on brute force to work: measurement systems, strategic planning, that sort of thing. That’s a lot better in many ways, because people respond better and feel better when they’re not being ordered around.
If you’re in that upper realm of “leadership tools,” using persuasion and role modeling to show your people the corporate goals and how to achieve them… that’s a fantastic step forward. But it only works if you discard those lower-level techniques that rely on intimidation.
Inspire all you want! But if the person at the bottom of the stack, doing the real work on the assembly line, at the customer service desk, or in a programming cubicle, is routinely coerced or punished–you have a bigger problem than can be solved with one or two workshops or planning meetings at management level.
I like this chart and plan to use it!
Read the full article though. Denning has some great insights on why Agile software development fails in organizations that don’t adapt on a larger scale. You have to cut out hierarchy and privilege, and if you’re not emotionally ready to let go of those things you are better off not pretending your development shop is “Agile.”
Things you can't possibly know
My attention was drawn this morning to an article on “10 Technology Skills That Will No Longer Help You Get A Job.” I’m not so impressed, mainly because I spend a lot of time around people who do research. This… isn’t research.
#3, “Software Support,” has no support.
The evidence for #4, “SEO Specialist,” is that Google renamed its Search Group. Nomenclature has power! That’s why my retirement account is named “Piña Coladas on the Beach With Jodie Foster.” (I am not making this up.) It should work, right?
#5, “QA Specialists and Managers,” seriously? “These days, the tech industry seems to be following Google’s lead and turning everyone into beta testers.” Hey, just because it is being done doesn’t mean it really can be done. This is a trend that won’t work out. (As some of the commenters pointed out, how’s that going for military and medical applications?)
I could go on, but the main thing I’m seeing in this article is a host of extrapolations, half-baked wishes, and flip assumptions. I do that all the time, too, but I save it for when I’m bored on long driving trips with anarchists. Heck, even my speculative blog posts here are full of anecdotes, not wild guesses.
Honestly, I’m just not seeing the value-add in that article. Maybe it would have been a good “link collection roundup” kind of post. Nothing wrong with that.
Is it worth it?
I got a kick out of today’s XKCD comic strip. (Chart: “How long can you work on making a routine task more efficient before you’re spending more time than you save?”) It reminds me a lot of a conversation I had last Friday with an entrepreneur who’s trying to automate some, but not all! of his information business.
See, “Allan” gets a lot of documents that are not so well standardized, puts their contents into a database, and essentially gets paid by his client companies to let them know when and where they–or their subsidiaries–are mentioned. (There’s more to it than that, but this is the relevant part right now.)
"Minimum Viable Product" jive
My college homie Dave is working on the “Minimum Viable Product” (MVP) version of his Baqbeat product. I’m always interested in what old friends are doing, so I asked him about it.
Baqbeat is a little hard to describe. Dave filled me in:
Baqbeat generates timelines of configuration changes to all the servers in
your development and operations environments – version control, build
servers, app servers, databases, and others. It automatically infers
related events on different timelines. So for example, you can see problems
in your production environment and immediately trace it to the code change
that broke it.
Help right now for tech-dependent startups!
(tl;dr: Answer a few easy questions to see if I can help your startup!)
Do you have a startup company that’s not yet all the way started up? Not quite done with the software tech product that defines you? Not sure how to finish it, or where to go next? Are you still stuck for a platform? Worried about funding? Afraid of making expensive mistakes?
I’m hearing you.
So you have this small business. You probably just started it. You’ve got a pretty good business plan, you’ve stashed some money to keep it going until it breaks even and can pay you, you’ve worked out health insurance and stuff… or maybe you’re keeping your day job and working a lot of nights and weekends to get it together. And it’s a cool idea: some product or service that people are definitely going to want to pay money for. It’s exciting and terrifying, because you don’t know what could go wrong, but you’re also a little apprehensive about how it will go right in the end.
Pre-Announcement: Help for your tech startup!
Well! I just spent a lot of time with various tech-related startup companies. Some of them have Projects That Suck; others are simply getting started with new things. I’ve learned a lot more about what does and doesn’t work, and I’m ready to share the results with you.
Do you have a startup that’s not yet all the way started up? Not quite done with the software tech product that defines you? Not sure how to finish it, or where to go next? Still stuck for a platform? Worried about funding? Afraid of making expensive mistakes?
If this sounds like you, watch here next Wednesday for the plan and the details. We can work together to get your startup project on track, within budget, and under control. I’m really excited about this. I think you will be too.
Rules for nothing
One blog entry from last year, “Look. This SOPA/PIPA Thing,” started out as an offhand blurb on my Facebook status. I think I spent two whole minutes writing it, which can be pretty effective when you know exactly what you want to say:
Rather than doing their own damn work chasing down copyright violators, they want to keep everyone off sites that *might* be used for unauthorized copying.
My favorite comment came from my old Grinnell College homie, Laura Allender Ferguson, who said simply: “Go Agile.” She was responding to my side-whine about the ever-changing requirements that we always get from software development clients.
How did we get into this mess?
I’m in the midst of an email conversation with a pretty well-known turnaround CEO adviser, the kind of person who can Make Your Company Not Suck. He’s way beyond me in terms of influence and reach, and he consults enterprise-wide for way bigger outfits, but for some reason he ended up asking me why so many projects still get in trouble even though all kinds of training and certification are available these days.
This is about what I wrote back.
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