If speed is of the essence then so is high quality
Ron Jeffries speaks out about trading quality for speed. Basically,
you're kidding yourself.
Gus commented:
The 'cut quality to go faster' view represents a lack of trust in the capabilities of the people actually building the product (whether justified or not). Dropping quality simply means you get garbage, later. You're absolutely right that keeping quality high requires continuous attention (no broken windows), balance (don't try to do too much at once) and skill (focus on the right stuff).
Back in April 2007 I talked about how
improving quality increases productivity. And I resolutely stand by this. Indeed it has become the cornerstone of
Energized Work and
our way of working and allows us to go from
concept to cash every week.
Labels: productivity, quality, speed
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Craft is ..
I just stumbled on a note I made before Christmas on a tweet from
Brian Marick that provided a
definition for craft. I tweaked it ever so slightly.
Craft is ..
obsession with quality,
tamed by discipline,
attentive to technique,
with a gut feel for structure
and awareness of context.
Labels: craftsmanship, discipline, quality
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Quality, relativism and a fetish
Sooner or later the manager says: "We've got to ship this thing". And, whether it's a conscious decision or a consequence of the ensuing pressure, corners are cut; defects get introduced and quality drops. The response is habitual and simply makes the situation worse.
Anxious people working alone introduce the most defects. Efficiency leads to breakages. Quality goes down and technical debt increases with every corner cut. When prioritized against the next feature promising to deliver business value, debt never gets repaid. There's no common language for talking about quality. The business-value-fetishists pay little attention to technical debt. They just assume quality is being delivered regardless of the decisions they make. They do, however, understand the cost of goods returned, the cost of rework, and the loss of customers but they choose to remain ignorant of the fact that these are typically the consequences of not valuing quality.
We believe that quality is the result of:
- Good behaviors and practices that are mutually reinforcing, where the practices are applied with discipline and rigor, and
- having the right attitude towards quality throughout the entire company.
We were going to use the above blurbage as a preamble in our session at
London QCon 2009 in the track:
Turning on a sixpence: Technical skills for agile development. You've probably heard people say: "It's good enough". Or "investing in more quality will provide diminishing returns". We wanted to talk about why we think the real obstacle to achieving high quality is the prevalence of relativism and to discuss who's really qualified to make these calls on quality.
Unfortunately, this isn't consistent with
Steve's plan for the track with us representing the "extreme position" on technical practices. So, instead, we'll do some talking about our way of working, which is full-on Extreme Programming surrounded by a shit-load of lessons learned through compromise (yeah, well, everybody starts somewhere) and experimentation, and the continuous investment we make to keep quality high.
Labels: extremeprogramming, quality, relativisim
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Beer helped
When Energized Work turned
one year old back in June we started to give a lot more attention to our ideas to develop the company. We decided it was time for action. While
attending Agile2008 in Toronto, we talked and talked over
beers in the bar at the top of the
CN Tower and talked some more in
Fynn's of Temple Bar. Since then we've been beavering away behind the scenes, occasionally alluding to progress in my
Tweets.
Without saying too much too soon, the essence of our thoughts was to make Energized Work a personification of Gus and myself - our values, the principles we work and live our lives by, our attitude and the chemistry we create when we work together. We've acquired a bit of a reputation for our 'no compromise' approach to creating software. We've taken flak but we've also been commended for our determination and resolute belief in our values and principles. Each to their own, I say. I didn't always say that. Our 'own' is working our way and having ridiculous amounts of fun. I see 'no compromise' and a crazy-eyed focus on craftsmanship and quality as strengths and differentiators to be marketed.
Recently,
Jason Gorman asked:
Could a recession open up the market for high-quality 'boutique' software development, where customers might be more inclined to take a bet on a start-up with great talent (based on their track record) and a commitment to delivering demonstrably high-quality? I hope he's onto something because it's exactly where we decided to take Energized Work when we were sitting up top in the
CN Tower in the Summer.
Back in December 2007 following our
session at
XPDAY,
Steve Freeman mentioned us and said: [Energized Work]
got the job because they don't compromise on the stuff they think is important and they managed to find a client that likes that. Is this every client in the world? No, but then it doesn't have to be.Exactly. We want to work with clients who actually recognise their software as an asset, want to improve how they work, and are prepared to invest. We want to work with clients who value the same things we do and we're resetting Energized Work to go find them. I'll talk a little more about this in my next post.
Labels: energizedwork, quality, values
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Right, Fast and Cheap: Choose Any 2
I had to laugh today when a colleague, shaking his head in exasperation following a business priority 'corridor conversation', distilled the basic forces of software development down into a single statement:
"Right, fast and cheap: Choose any two..."
I like the way he rolled up both scope and quality into the user term 'right' (time=fast, cost=cheap) - reminds me of
Jeff Patton's definition of user quality.
Labels: quality
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