Not Obviously Wrong

What’s obviously wrong in software and product development? The list is continually changing, but here’s some stuff which was not obviously wrong ten or twenty years ago, which has recently become obviously wrong, at least to many people in the world of software development:

Obviously Wrong

• Big batches and queues of work (aka Waterfall)
• Utilisation (i.e. keeping resources fully busy)
• Ignoring stakeholders (a.k.a. The Folks That Matter™)
• Big Design Up Front (BDUF) (a.k.a. long feedback loops, or none at all)
• Violence in the workplace
• The daily commute

And here’s a list of stuff which has not (yet) attained the status of “obviously wrong” – and so appears in the list labelled “Not Obviously Wrong”:

Not Obviously Wrong

• Estimating (see: #NoEstimates)
• Management
• Command and control
• Telling (ordering) people what to do
• Leadership
• Specialisation
• Cost accounting
• Projects (see: #NoProjects)
• Big developments in big chunks with big groups of people
• Ignoring the costs of delays
• Testing (a.k.a. inspection)
• Demanding compliance to defined ways of doing things (a.k.a. process dogma)
• Separating ownership of the way the work works from the people that do the work
• Agile
• SAFe
• Scrum
• Kanban Method
• Ignoring the Cost of (misconceived) Focus
• Work (as contrasted with e.g. Serious Play)
• Open plan offices
• Local optimisations
• Dress codes (suits, ties, etc.)
• etc.

How do items get to move from the one list to the other? (note: everyone has their own two lists, and each item moves at different times for different folks). How do your two lists look, at the moment?

Unlearning

Looking at this another way, the obviously wrong list above has items that, although once not obviously wrong, now appear on many folks’ obviously wrong list, having made the transition through e.g. a process of reflection, evaluation, discussion and above all UNLEARNING.

No Hashtags

FWIW, it occurs to me that we might choose to regard the raft of #No… hashtags on Twitter as opportunities to consider in which of our own – and others’ – lists the related (hashtagged) topic appears.

– Bob