Measure twice, cut once

Tom Breur

2 June 2013

Agile practices aim to reduce overhead. This is why we call it “the art of maximizing the work not done.” The waterfall method never worked, and ‘even’ its inventor (Winston Royce http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_W._Royce) knew so. In his seminal paper “Managing the Development of Large Software Systems” (http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Process/waterfall.pdf) he states that the development process never follows this orderly linear  (“Waterfall” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterfall_model) pattern for realistic projects. Yet so many people out there still cling to the big design up-front (BDUF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Design_Up_Front).

It can hardly make sense, though, to run the opposite way: “let’s start hacking, and we’ll find out later what works.” Measure twice, cut once.

The truth so often lies somewhere in the middle. Lean practices offer a disciplined, yet highly empirical way, to avoid analysis paralysis. And at the same time stay away from the BDUF.

We suggest you plan carefully, so that when implementation begins, it is just that: implementation. And not a new round of problem solving that gets triggered because affected parties were insufficiently involved in the plan…

If finding this balances interests you, join us for our Hands-on Agile workshop in the fall of 2013

http://www.bi-podium.nl/master/hands_on_agile_practices