Month: December 2011

Sooner or Later You’ll Need to Plan-Up

What’s better — producing a detailed project plan in advance or figuring it out as you go? It’s a bit of a trick question because the correct answer is neither. Here’s the reasoning. Let’s say that you could plan out every project detail before beginning to write any code. Let’s not worry about how long […]

Software Waste Is an Insidious Problem – Eliminate It

Lean software development isn’t a set of procedures but rather a set of principles. Every software development team would be well-served by studying these principles: Eliminate Waste (focus on value creation) Create Knowledge (keep improving) Build Quality In (test and refactor continually) Defer Commitment (maintain loose coupling throughout) Optimize the Whole (don’t be dragged down […]

Agile Development Won’t Solve Your Problems

There’s a popular misconception that agile software development can solve the major problems that plague software teams. I wish that was true but sadly, it’s not. Agile development approaches like Scrum, Kanban, Lean and XP are designed to reveal problems, not solve them. The solutions are situational — they take different forms depending on the […]

Obstruction of Progress Should Be a Criminal Offense

The differences in how small companies and large enterprises operate is staggering. Small companies usually make decisions quickly — not because they’re smarter (believe me, they’re not) but simply because their processes are simpler. There are fewer people and systems involved. In a small company, the number of interconnections among people and systems is relatively […]