Considering our disdain for plan-driven project management, you could certainly be forgiven for assuming so.
But then there’s that pesky “E” word. While we might reject most traditional Gantt-chart PMI nonsense, we also take a dim view of some of the loosey-goosey, “self-organizing people over process” philosophy of the Agile methodology. With no disrespect to Ward and Kent and company, we have more faith in W.E. Deming’s or Taiichi Ohno’s understanding of the right relationship between management and the production workforce, or between expert process design and individual ingenuity.
We recognize that some projects are sufficiently critical to merit greater accountability than what is usually possible under the Agile paradigm of informal practice. We think the Agile community is guilty of seducing developers and encouraging them to feel like they are the center of the universe. We like developers a lot too, not least because we are developers, but we believe that customers are the undisputed center of the universe, and everything else must revolve about creating value for them in their own terms. Now, the Agile community certainly gives a lot of lip-service to customers, but we hope to show that just having a customer rep on site, writing tests and reviewing demos, is nowhere even remotely close to good enough for some projects.
We want guarantees about security and reliability and fitness for use, all at the same time. And we think the only way to get that is pull scheduling of a rigorous and formal engineering workflow. Think Lean Design for Six Sigma for Software. That’s what this blog is about. We expect perfection in the eyes of the customer, one feature at a time.
Eric Landes | 19-Apr-07 at 9:45 am | Permalink
Can we get an RSS Feed? I couldn’t find one for the blog, just the one above here. BTW, this is some great stuff, I enjoy reading Dave’s stuff, and you’re a welcome addition to my blog roll!
Bob Corrick | 19-Apr-07 at 10:33 am | Permalink
I too had some concerns about “developer centric” while reviewing James Shore (& al.)’s Art of Agile book – which did I feed back, buried among other comments.
I agree about the customer-centric nature of software development.
But… “one feature at a time”? Surely – for many contexts, not all – there’s (a) a critical mass of features to get started and (b) an investment in familiarity with a so-far-perfect version of the product/solution?
What am I missing, here?
coreyl | 19-Apr-07 at 1:14 pm | Permalink
Yes, there are RSS feeds! We have your choice of:
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/?feed=rss
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/?feed=rss2
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/?feed=rdf
http://leansoftwareengineering.com/?feed=atom
…will get some links up on the sidebar ASAP
coreyl | 19-Apr-07 at 1:19 pm | Permalink
Hi Bob,
Thank you very much for the question.
“One feature at a time” is an ideal, in the same way that “single piece flow” is an ideal. The goal is to reduce batch sizes of work in process. Of course the smallest batch size is 1, but there can be tradeoffs against planning overhead and workflow handoffs. When designing your process, you should try to find the smallest batch size that justifies the planning cost, with an eye towards reducing that planning cost over time.
Also, the value of the critical mass of features depends somewhat on the source of that critical mass property. If it’s a critical mass because that’s the best way to meet customer expectations, then that is a function of design quality and you should strive to please the customer. Obviously, it isn’t useful to ship a car without the brakes installed.
On the other hand, if it’s a critical mass because your requirements lack orthogonality, then perhaps there is further investment to be made in analysis and design capability.
Either way, there can be some queueing of completed work at the end of the process in order to deploy in the right-sized chunk. That shouldn’t let you off the hook for controlling work-in-process to the best of your ability.
Look for a more detailed post on this in the near future.
M. Hassan Raza | 06-May-07 at 11:40 am | Permalink
Gr8 Work guys, i love what you write about, and i do agree for what you wrote about making devs center of everything when customer should be the main focus.
With my three years of experience i totally agree with ya.
Good work and keep bloggin…..Thanks a lot.
Hassan
coreyl | 06-May-07 at 10:26 pm | Permalink
Thank you Hassan,
We love the feedback, so please feel free to send us any comments or questions you might have.