Edwin Goddard

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Edwin Goddard

Edwin Goddard

@heedfull

Husand and father of two sets of twins. Passionate software developer and agilista

Galway, Ireland Katılım Nisan 2009
812 Takip Edilen163 Takipçiler
Edwin Goddard retweetledi
NoEstimates
NoEstimates@No_Estimates·
If you assigned 1 story point to every story, how much slicing would you do before you were confident you could actually complete each story in a day or so? Congratulations! You just discovered #NoEstimates. Stop trying to fit the estimate to the story. Start slicing the stories.
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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@rainbowinverted @allenholub When working collaboratively in a mob or ensemble you can get great focus when everyone is aligned and working together to solve the same problem. All of the experience and perspectives of the team can be brought to bear. From personal experience it's amazing what can be achieved
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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
Johannes makes a really good point. If anybody complains that a “interruption“ takes time away from “their work,“ they are not working collaboratively. They’re not really part of a team in the sense of people working together to achieve a common goal. Instead they're isolated individuals. Collaborative teams are simply more effective than isolated individuals working virtually or physically near each other. Sitting together does not make you a team.
Johannes Westlund@johwestlund

@allenholub So since they're not working together, they have very little or no need to communicate. Since everyone is assigned a separate task and is personally accountable to deliver only that, there's little room for helping each other. Because who is going to take time from "their" work?

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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
So many of the comments I hear about estimation boil down to "but we have to plan and meet our goals." That's a deep failure to grasp the concept (of agile ways of working). We plan strategically, and our goals are strategic. The details of what we have to build to meet those strategic goals are discovered incrementally by releasing small bits of valuable software and getting feedback on it. We defer details, in other words, to the last responsible moment. Defining those details too early doesn't really work because the customers themselves won't know what they need until they have something in their hands. The details are invariably wrong. Too-early focus on details also often leads to building things nobody wants or needs. There are occasional exceptions, of course, in the corners of the program where regulations, or the actual behavior of actual hardware, or necessary algorithms apply, but those bits comprising the entire system are exceedingly rare.
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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@Madisonkanna I just stopped doing it and either gave a story a 1 (small enough/right sized) or gave it whatever the biggest number was for too big and needs breaking down IMO that's all you need and then you can focus on flow
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Madison Kanna
Madison Kanna@Madisonkanna·
estimating tickets is my least favorite part of working as a developer
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
A Sprint is NOT a mini project. You DO NOT commit to finishing some specific bit of work (or be somehow penalized if you don't "finish" on time). It's NOT about completing stories (or, horrors, retiring tickets). That's all nothing but control-focused waterfall management bullying people into working in ineffective ways. A Sprint has a _goal_, not a target. E.g.: "make our customer's life better in this product area" or "help the user do X." Anything you can build that moves the product in the direction of that goal is just fine.
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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@antzzzm @allenholub @WoodyZuill Don't you love being taken out of context. The point I was trying to make was to use that investment (the team) the most effective way (building the most valuable thing with the customer) rather than wasting time estimating things, that's a sure why to not deliver and get fired
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Anthony Marter
Anthony Marter@antzzzm·
@allenholub @WoodyZuill This tweet is emblematic of why we are seeing such significant retrenchment in tech - dev teams are a fixed cost right up to the point at which somebody decides they are no longer earning enough to cover the cost. x.com/heedfull/statu…
Edwin Goddard@heedfull

@WoodyZuill @antzzzm @allenholub I like to think of a development team as a fixed cost. How would you like them to invest their time. Give them something to work on and periodically review are they making progress to the goal. Is the thing they're working on still the most valuable, if so keep going if not pivot

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
What do you think the "no estimates thing" entails? @WoodyZuill , when he coined the tag, effectively said "we just finished a project with no estimates, let's discuss that." #NoEstimates is not a thing, it's a discussion surrounding how some teams/orgs get by just fine without estimates, and perhaps others could benefit from learning how they do that.
Anthony Marter@antzzzm

@allenholub Your customers can't tell you the cost of delivering that value tho... This is where I have an issue with the whole no estimates thing - value to the customer is the R part of ROI, you need to know (or at least have a reasonable handle on) the I

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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@HarryBailey @allenholub I wasn't talking about two teams. In my experience, the best products are built by teams that talk directly with the users and can collaboratively build it piece by piece
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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
“We have no idea” is the _only_ honest answer to “how long will it take?” and “how much will it cost?” You are proposing a business model based on lies.
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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@WoodyZuill @antzzzm @allenholub I like to think of a development team as a fixed cost. How would you like them to invest their time. Give them something to work on and periodically review are they making progress to the goal. Is the thing they're working on still the most valuable, if so keep going if not pivot
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Woody Zuill
Woody Zuill@WoodyZuill·
@antzzzm @allenholub Perhaps. Perhaps not. There are many ways to make decisions. It is my suggestion that estimates are not the “I”. They are a guess about the “I”. And there are other ways.
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
Estimates are not needed for choosing what work to do. The only thing that matters is customer value. If something is essential to the customer, you cannot choose not to do it. If it’s not essential, don’t work on it at all. Admittedly, they may be useful for cost-of-delay computations, but you don’t need an “estimate” beyond high-medium-low for that.
Ralph Galantine@RalphGalantine

@allenholub @dodgerfan_mike @ultramaximalmax Holding people to estimates is stupid and counterproductive. Estimates are needed for choosing which work to do. Value to be delivered must be compared to expected cost. T-shirt sizing is a good tool. Story points are often misused, but can also be a good tool.

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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
This is really the main flaw in the argument that mob/ensemble programming is somehow less efficient/productive than individuals working alone because "common sense."
Tim Ottinger@tottinge

@dogeth0 @allenholub Are you suggesting that typing is the bottleneck that keeps software from completing quickly? I think that's been disproven often enough. Only a small % of the time is raw coding. See: industriallogic.com/blog/faster-an…

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Edwin Goddard
Edwin Goddard@heedfull·
@Martien @allenholub Let the people doing the work decide the best way to do that work and to structure themselves "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams."
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Martien
Martien@Martien·
@allenholub So the question becomes: who – or which wise people –should structure the organization? What roles should be on that team? Mgt can/should gather this team? If you nail that, you’ve nailed your product. Right?
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Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
Adam brings up an interesting point 👇. Conway's Law says that organizational communication paths [== org structure] are mirrored in the systems the org creates. When management organizes the teams, they are effectively designing the software. They know nothing about software. We are turning over our architecture to fools.
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
Backlogs are a Scrum thing, not an Agile thing. Customer-driven shops that work with agility decide what to do next by doing the current thing (and getting feedback). The decision is driven by strategic planning, but backlogs are entirely tactical.
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
WannaTeachPE
WannaTeachPE@WannaTeachPE·
The Legendary Coach Dick. ‘Winning is being better than yesterday, every day.’ 🫡
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Dave Farley
Dave Farley@davefarley77·
How do you make a developer angry in just 2 WORDS? 👇
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Doc Norton
Doc Norton@DocOnDev·
Report to boss: "Reactionary decisions with vague objectives and artificial boundaries executed by ad-hoc groups have led to technical debt and low morale." Boss: "How could this be? Quick; Get some of our top people and give them 3 months to solve this!!" #leadership
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Edwin Goddard retweetledi
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub
Allen Holub. https://linkedIn.com/in/allenholub@allenholub·
The product owner's job is NOT to tell the team how to do its work or what to work on. They "order the backlog" but it's up to the team as a whole to decide "who does what, when, and how." A PO is ***not*** a manager. They tell nobody what to do. Their job is to understand the market as a whole, to arrange conversations between the team and the customer (they are **not** an intermediary between the two), and to organize the work by value. That's it. What they do is nothing at all like the old Business Analyst job. They are ***a team member*** who specializes in product development.
TJS@XerWoman

@allenholub Yup , but what should the team member do when they report about spending 3 hours on “non-story” task and Product Owner throws a fit ?

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Keşfet

@allenholub @Madisonkanna @antzzzm @WoodyZuill @HarryBailey @Martien @elonmusk @BarackObama