Agility

Are you failing enough?

The process of creating software, compared to other manufacturing processes, is a little bit special. One unique property of a software product is that it can be changed easily and (relatively) cheaply.

Over in the physical world, changing a product is not so easy. Supply chains, inventory, machinery, whole factories, who knows what’s involved that is either difficult to change quickly and/or prohibitively expensive to change.

So what about this failing more often? Well if you have the ability to quickly change your software product, you can also run A LOT of experiments!

It all starts with smaller stories

I think most developers have experienced a taks sitting in progress for days or even weeks (or… months!) on end. This long running work eventually gets merged and released but it turns out it’s the wrong thing and a large part needs rework.

The solution to this struggle is two-fold. The first half is getting invested in your customers. Talk to them, establish a good relation with the people that actually use the product you are building. Find out what they really need. This practice is known as User Centered Design and while I find it very interesting, it’s not the topic of this post. We’re looking at the other half, breaking down work into smaller pieces and the result of doing so.