Idea: a sprint that when it delivers its increment, the overall delivered product has reached an important milestone. It could be that it has reached an MVP stage and can be delivered (though would not be commercially successful), or can be deployed and actually deliver new capability.
Sprints are all meant to ‘deliver’ business value, but realistically most of them just showcase the increment. The increment often remains unusable.
There is an implicit assumption that the world stops changing when the Agile-built product is delivered.
The argument for Agile over Waterfall is that the world and the requirements change while the product is being built. Agile actually accommodates this change (true). But the world doesn’t stop changing just because we delivered, so a post project ongoing development may need to be planned for.
More important than rate of learning is ‘are you learning the right thing’?
How did words from a 2-day meeting at a ski lodge, on principles for a new approach to building software become such gospel that they are now being used as principles to run whole corporations engaged in activities nothing to do with software? The Agile Manifesto principles are not even the best choice for all types software development.
This is a fascinating phenomenon worthy of study. At the very least it can confirm theories about diffusion of untested practices and fads. A generation from now, indiscriminate and inappropriate applications of the Agile Manifesto will be seen as something of a Tulip Mania. Or a YAF. Yet Another Fad.
When all the competition has achieved excellence, what is the next competitive arena?
A project is a project in the eyes of the beholder, not an objective character of the undertaking, because the same undertaking can be routine to you, a little bit unique to me, and incredibly daunting to another. Project management is designed to help you cope with undertakings that (to you) meet the criteria of a project.
At a training course, the facilitator asked the audience to consider the impact of technology on the world, how technology shrinks and disrupts the world.
I thought about the opposite: the impact of the world on technology. With increasing easy access to technology, all the different cultures, all the different ways of thinking, all the different experiences provide solutions to needs that are relatively unimportant to much of the West.
Think about rat-proof telecom cables from Huawei that Western telecom companies did not come up with for whatever reason. Think about ultra compact white appliances from Haier that Chinese students needed because they live in tiny accommodations. Think abour the mobile payment system from M-Pesa and increasing thousands of other examples.
The way these applications of technology from other parts of the world have an impact on the technology the West is developing.
