Dev & Creatives: Gnomes & Unicorns

Sitting in on the Phase Two kick-off call for our long-lasting project, I experienced déjà vu. Tensions among the team of creative advisers and consultants were escalating. We were trying to improve Phase One of the project. The Phase One product wasn’t so bad—it was a good project but lacked a few things. So the consultants created a list of design improvements, which could be done in Phase Two. I was having déjà vu because I already knew that at least half of these improvements had been made. How did I know about them? My development team told me about them in Phase One. As a team, we almost never shared our Read more

Why Agile

Flat feels work well for traditional industries, such as construction. I.e. if you are doing a kitchen remodeling, you can easily calculate the number of cabinets, shelves, etc. The time it takes to install doesn’t fluctuate that much. Software engineering is more like scientific research. The scope is never fully understood and there’s a constant state of uncertainty. That’s why engineers don’t like fixed bids – they don’t want to pay for consequences of that uncertainty by their time and lost opportunities. Business guys don’t want to pay for that uncertainty either by pushing engineers into fixed bids. That’s where Agile comes in. Read more