Sunday, November 18, 2007
One of the best things about working in a software shop that has embraced the principles and practices of agile software development is the continued focus on what's really important.  Every week, our product manager and our business analysts are forced to think about what the most important piece of functionality is that can be added to our software.  I'm sure it's frustrating for them to have to, week after week, put things that seem relatively important on the back burner for those things that are most important. 

Focusing on the most important things can be frustrating, and it can lead to business trying to slip "easy" things into iterations whenever possible.  I believe this is a symptom of having to make so many concessions each and every week.  Since they never get everything they want, it's the "easy" things that are the most tempting to add.  However, I'm of the belief that "easy" is never good.  Doing something because it's easy, is doing something wrong.

It's no secret that a lot of software that is developed today is total crap.  It's loaded with feature upon feature.  It's hard to use, and doesn't do anything that helps the user kick ass.  Anybody can do "easy"....you don't want to be just anybody do you?

Sunday, November 18, 2007 5:25:35 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) | Comments [2] |  | #
Monday, November 19, 2007 5:47:52 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
> I'm sure it's frustrating for them to have to, week after week, put things that seem relatively important on the back burner for those things that are most important.

i heard a podcast in which Scott Ambler put it as something like: we're going to make/ask all these people with 'manager' in the title, well, 'manage.' there's no hiding in an agile shop.

good post.
Thursday, November 22, 2007 9:22:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
>However, I'm of the belief that "easy" is never good. Doing something because it's easy, is doing something wrong.

I think doing something "easy" is especially symptomatic of the web application development sphere. Web dev is, traditionally, seen as not only easy but also quick and it's ever so tempting to just cram web apps full of little tweaks and features because, somehow, people have an idea that web app development is totally different from software development. Why? Beats me. I agree, though - "easy" is dangerous.
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