Showing posts with label cowboys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cowboys. Show all posts

Dec 24, 2010

Dealing With Cowboys, Part II

The previous post on how to approach cowboy businesses concluded with:
Stakeholders should handle the business, not the developers. That should be the focus when dealing with cowboys: wresting control back to the customer and help them slow down their frantic code herding. Pull in the reins if you will.
A quick recap: Cowboys have seized control over the process. This means a lot of time is spent doing stuff they think is most important and not necessarily what is most valuable for their customers. And here lies the key to success: get the organization back to being in a constant focus on providing customer value.

The first step is talking to them about value-driven development, minimum marketable features and the importance of that throughout the entire development process. Explain why "business value" is the language they should be using when defining work items and not technical features. This is the easiest and most hands-on way to begin the transformation. It's also the only way customers and stakeholders can understand what the programmers are actually working on.


Dec 18, 2010

Dealing With Cowboys

"The coolest thing with Scrum," he said, "is that you can get rid of your long requirement phase and start deliver at once. You can also throw away your copy of MS Project. You don't have to create any big design documents or spend time in test phases any more. Release monthly and get paid earlier!"

Confused stares.

"Doesn't that sound great?" he continued excitedly.

More confused stares. Awkward moment.

"What's going on here?" he thought.

Muffled laughter.

"But we aren't doing any of that," the manager responded. "It sounds expensive and wasteful. Besides, we already release several times a week. This Scrum thing seems pretty pointless to me."

Long pause.

"I trust my tech lead and it looks like he was right again: We are already doing it the best way possible. We won't be needing your services. Thank you for your visit."

What's going on here? Is Scrum guy wrong? Who laughed? Why?