Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
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Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
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Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#2Joel’s 100% correct about limiting the size of the backlog. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a kanban system, SRUM, a bug database, Github issues, whatever. The team’s attention is a finite resource, and stuffing items in there wastes it.
Limiting the size forces you to throw items out as you go along, and each one of these “We’re never going to do this” decision helps sharpen the design and prevent over-architecture.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#3Good read. I think reducing deployment cycles into weeks for large/complex software could only work though if you have a decent set of automated tests.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#4Joel’s 100% correct about limiting the size of the backlog. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a kanban system, SRUM, a bug database, Github issues, whatever. The team’s attention is a finite resource, and stuffing items in there wastes it. Limiting the size forces you to throw items out as you go along, and each one of these “We’re never going to do this” decision helps sharpen the design and prevent over-archit…
Yup. It forces you to prioritize, and if you don't have that constraint you will be forever overloaded and overwhelmed; Things that no longer have the same value or relevance may linger in your mind through the reminders of scanning the backlog + psychologically, having a mountain of things to do feels like a mountain of things to do - there's no need to remind yourself of those, as if they are important enough you will remember them, re-visit them, they will re-surface.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#5This concept reminds me of "Technical Debt" in that its a way of expressing what the software development world has found to be best practice in terms that an outsider/business-person would understand.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#6This isn't really a new idea.
For anyone interested in 'systems thinking' and associated optimisations, check out the 'Implementing Lean' book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Implementing-Lean-Software-Developme...
Or The Goal for something slightly different:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement...
I have to say, there's way more wisdom in the more mature 'lean' world than there is in the trendier 'agile'.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#7Good read. I think reducing deployment cycles into weeks for large/complex software could only work though if you have a decent set of automated tests.
This is valuable enough to justify writing the tests, isn't it?
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#8> A lot of the ideas on the backlog are bad ideas, and you merely wrote them down to avoid hurting the feelings of the people who thought them up.
I love how candid he can be sometimes. In my experience, this is true of about 30% of the backlog.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#9> A lot of the ideas on the backlog are bad ideas, and you merely wrote them down to avoid hurting the feelings of the people who thought them up. I love how candid he can be sometimes. In my experience, this is true of about 30% of the backlog.
In my experience it doesn't really become clear whether the ideas are good or bad until they've been written down. For this reason I prefer a two-stage backlog, where the first stage is for definition and the second stage is for the ideas from the first stage that you decide you're actually going to do, just not right now.
Re: Software Inventory by Joel Spolsky
#10This isn't really a new idea. For anyone interested in 'systems thinking' and associated optimisations, check out the 'Implementing Lean' book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Implementing-Lean-Software-Developme... Or The Goal for something slightly different: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Goal-Process-Ongoing-Improvement... I have to say, there's way more wisdom in the more mature 'lean' world than there is in the trendier '…
For anyone interested, check out the Implementing Lean book:
And the rest of the Poppendiecks' books too. They're all good.
I have to say, there's way more wisdom in the more mature 'lean' world than there is in the trendier 'agile'.
I'd disagree with that. Its just that agile has suffered the curse of becoming popular - so there are lots of folks/tools out there who have the label agile, but none of the meat.