This morning I was working on a project plan for a small to medium sized project. 12 or so man-months. The PM was kind enough to send me the plan to hack up before applied precedents and resources. As I continually moved tasks out of the first sprint, I heard Orson Welles in my head (with Beethoven in the background) saying the famous phrase “We will sell no wine”. I think that applies to Agile Development as well. Often I see plans that seem to want to get the big items (rocks Thanks a lot Stephen Covey!!) out of the way first. That robs a project of what I see as a very important attribute: Momentum. When we evolve the application slowly everybody wins. From my point of view, small successes lead to big successes which make for a happy team. I wish I could think of a catchy programming phrase like. “We will write no code before the mode” or “We build no stuff till the other stuff is good enough” . I think I will start quoting Orson Welles the next time an Industrious PM wants to “Waterfall me”.
Advertisement
