Sunday, October 12, 2014

Weekend Reader, Week 41

WeekendReader41

Wow, already week 41 … I missed some weeks since last time. Time to catch up!

 

The controversy around SAFe goes on:

Erwin van der Koogh on When is SAFe appropriate to use?

SAFe is great for companies trying to delay the inevitable.

 

 And there seemed to be some fun at the Agile Business Conference:

 

 

Trouble in Paradise: Disillusion about GitHub

GitHub was always my poster-child as a modern software company. Their approach to a no-managers culture is fascinating:

And the presentations of Zach Holman of GitHub are famous. They give the impression of being a paradise for software developers...

… but at the beginning of the year there seemed to leak some concerning stories from that paradise:

I don’t know what to think about it, but for me it’s a a modern case of “Paradise Lost”.

 

More about the No Managers Culture

How Medium Is Building a New Kind of Company with No Managers:

In Holacratic systems, individuals operate without managers because many of them have decision-making power in a particular area. And since everything is made as explicitly as possible, everyone in the organization knows who has authority over what.

Harvard Business Review: First, Let’s Fire All The Managers

Management is the least efficient activity in your organization.

What I find particularly interesting in the above HBR article is, that the No Managers Culture is not rooted in nor confined to the software industry.

 

 

More about Plans and Estimations

My Customers Need Estimates, What Do I do? 

If you choose to serve customers who need an estimate/price, then do estimates/prices. If you choose to serve customers who are willing to let requirements emerge, then get good at the Agile way. It’s your choice.

Two Reasons Why Estimates Aren’t Worth It

Creating estimates is pretty frustrating because everyone who sits in an estimation meeting knows that these estimates have got nothing to do with reality.

Why are software development estimates regularly off by a factor of 2-3 times? 
This brilliant analogy is showing the impossibility to plan a hike from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 

 

The challenge of planning incremental product development (from Incremental development at Spotify):

Incremental Development Spotify

Quote about plans from Friedrich Dürrenmatt:

Zufall Dürrenmatt

(The more humans proceed according to plan, the more effectively coincidence is able to meet them.) 

 

JavaScript

JavaScript continues to conquer the world:

But not everybody seems to be delighted:


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