@azaza tells the story of how the English Channel was crossed on a man-powered machine by firstly solving the problem of how to iterate quickly and try thousands of differently configured aircraft. Thanks to @mootpointer for this one.
To wit:
If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
Definitely worth viewing this presentation from Jeff Patton. It captures the spirit of being agile outside of the constraints of frameworks like Scrum.
My favourite quote:
Your guesses about the future are probably wrong
Unusual to have the SMH with a piece on the challenges facing the Software Industry. This quote absolutely sums up the problems that the Agile community is trying to solve
The old saying of ‘measure twice and cut once’ actually works against software development because it creates this false expectation that if we spend more time planning we will spend less time changing our minds. Sometimes the way it works on paper feels wrong once put into software or what appears as mild scope creep actually results in fundamental changes under the hood. I feel that the modern digital equivalent should be ‘prototype twice, go live once’.
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