Categories
Engineering

No Perfect Solutions

There are no perfect solutions, there are always trade-offs.
Expecting perfect solutions – checking all the boxes – is a common mistake projects and their sponsors make. One cannot have it all and have to give up on some of the requested features and functions.

Solutions to complex problems always involve trade-offs. There lies the challenge – among the different, less-than-perfect options, which one gives the most and compromises the least?

If you like this topic, you might be interested in listening to the episode – The short list – from Seth Godin’s podcast – Akimbo.

Categories
Engineering

Slow Work Needs Time

Some work is not meant to be done quickly and not meant to be done by a specific date either.

It is not unreasonable to expect output and results in time to be able to progress, but slow work needs time.

Pin a deadline on or timebox an activity and be prepared to make trade offs.

Trade offs could mean less than ideal.
Perhaps “less than ideal” is what’s needed for the work to be done.

Also…

For an even longer (much longer) read, check out Driving engineers to an arbitrary date is a value destroying mistake from Gandalf Hudlow on iiSM.org

Categories
Engineering Product Management

Measuring Outcome

What is the measure of an outcome in an organisation?
Is it a tick in the box?
Is it a business relevant metric?

Metrics are too often mistaken for a tick in the box.

Metrics are hard, measuring them is even harder.
Moving the needle on a metric that counts is an achievement.
Recognising people, teams, divisions, entire organisations for results is leadership.

A tick in the box has never delivered any real value.
A tick in a box has never transformed a business.
What kind of culture does giving credit for a ticking the box drive?

If your daily work involves ticking boxes, send a link to this article to your superiors.

Categories
Engineering Product Management

On Measuring

Measuring code quality, productivity, technical debt is difficult.

Measuring number of lines of code; speed of delivering code; completed stories, features, epics is easy.

Do not trade quality away for comfort.

Categories
Engineering Product Management

Is it Serious?

Transpiling a good doctor-patient joke to techie-CEO:

  • CEO says to one of his techie “Is it serious? How long do we have until we go offline?”
  • Techie says “5”
  • CEO says “5 what? 5 days? 5 weeks? 5 months?”
  • Techie says “4…”

Categories
Engineering Product Management

You call yourself a SaaS?

You do not get to call your product a Software as a Service (SaaS) if it does not support webhooks or REST hooks in addition to a decent collection of APIs.

Your product is just web application.

Categories
Engineering Product Management

The Obsession with Blockers

So much focus is lost on asking – What are the blockers? – that the organisation forgets to enable its people to do the work.

Failing to enable those that do the work is the biggest blocker in an organisation.