I have until August 18 to finish and I should have no problem doing so. The book is a quick, pleasurable read... so far. I plan to blog about the stuff I find meaningful. If anyone finds this blog, I hope it's helpful to you too and feel free to share your comments.
GR first got my attention by saying it was about, among other things, getting rid of...
- Pie-in-the-sky functional specs
- Unrealistic user testing
- Interminable staff meetings
- Interconnected webs of assumptions (love that phrase!)
I've been railing about the second bullet for the last couple of years, but haven't seemed to make much impact. It's not that my colleagues don't agree with the need for accurate user testing. It's more that it is unfamiliar territory and requires more effort, at least on the front-end. It should save effort on the back-end, but somehow that doesn't increase the buy-in to make time for it. Even simple tests of functionality are difficult to do for remote users. Things have improved, but it's still not easy or even possible for us to do remote testing of some features. We have to wait until things go live then--surprise!--something doesn't work.
And, don't get me started on the first bullet. Since officially becoming a project manager, I've been amazed at how scopes will continue to creep. I've been much more successful at advocating the need to scale projects back. Yet, there is much more we can do.
GR is not just about getting rid of stuff; it's also about...
- delivering better results because it forces you to deal with the actual problems you're trying to solve instead of your ideas about those problems.
- "scoping down" rather than moving your deadlines out and out and out ad infinitum
- making it easier to embrace change
- making mistakes
- passion!
