Prototyping > Planning
Reflections on what I learned during while Engineering Yammer (now Microsoft) in 7 GIFs.
Planning sucks, prototypes rule
“Planning is Guessing” — Jason Fried
“So don’t spend time guesstimating on a brittle tech spec, or making endless pizza threads and instead hack a prototype. Code will tell you if you’re in the right track or not.” — Brian Morton
If metrics stay flat, you’re probably measuring the wrong thing
What’s measured improves — Peter Drucker
“Metrics shorten your decision cycle, they make you move faster” — @coda. When changes are made, and metrics stay the same, it probably means you’re forgetting a dimension. Don’t neglect code complexity as a metric, it’s very likely the one that can explain why features are taking months to implement instead of weeks.
“Everything is hard before it is easy. Stick with it.”— Adam Pisoni
Adam gave this advice to a packed room at a http://www.blackgirlscode.com/ event. I wish someone had told me that when I was their age.
“Caring about everything is caring about nothing“— Kris Gale
Kris Gale like making the analogy that “software products are like soundboards” they have tons of sliders that make them hard to manage. There is always a temptation of just “raising the volume all across the board” with one big and massive effort, but in reality that’s not the best strategy.
If you want to keep making progress you must focus on the low sliders first. Not only doing so will yield results faster, but they will have bigger impact because those low sliders are hurting your team more than the ones that are “halfway there”.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
“The problem (and the solution) is always people, who knew? “— Jim VanNest
Great teams make great tech, so your team should always invest on ways improving collaboration. The Freaky Friday Management Technique is a good example of small investments that can yield great results.
Diversity is your company’s biggest strength
People want to see better diversity numbers. They actually do. But they wanna do that without sacrificing anything they currently have. — Marco Rogers
Like cropping monoculture is bad for bees, drinking the kool-aid is terrible for teams.
A Gif is worth a billion words.
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