Failure is an option for software development ( and in life)

From childhood we are programmed to fear the failure, the opposite behavior is rewarded. I still see many companies & people trying to recruit people with a “Failure is not an option” requirement. Such practices reinforce this behavior. In many cases the “prevention” causes more problem & costs more than the actual issue.

Without failure there is no learning. Any process/framework/companies which needs people to follow the “dotted” lines and where “failure is not an option” will not result in innovation or new ideas ; And eventually they will cease to exist.

A lot has changed in the last decade, now we have tools and process to give instantaneous feedback to any changes we can think of.

Clean code + Short feedback cycle (CI/CD) + automation + transparent data metrics should be the cornerstone for any software development team

A good software development strategy will have process to review failures and make the changes to ensure that people are learning from their mistakes. Such a continuous learning and process adaption cycle will gradually improve the knowledge and capability of the team. You might start with an average team but you will end up with a team of superstars

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PDCA & SCRUM (or Agile); Why is it important?

The PDCA (Plan DO Check Act) cycle was made popular by Dr. W. Edwards Deming. This is a scientific cyclic process which can be used to improve the process (or product). This is cyclic in nature and usually time boxed. Plan This is the first stage of the process. During this step the team discusses the objectives, the process and the clear conditions of exit (conditions of acceptance). This stage sets the measurable and achievable goals for the team. DO Team works together to achieve the objective set in the planning phase. Team works with the set of agreed process. Check Once the implantation is done team regroups and verifies the output and compares it to the agreed conditions of acceptance decided during the planning phase. The deviation, if any, is noted down. ACT If any deviation in planned tasks is observed during the Check stage, a root cause analysis is conducted. Team brainstorms and identifies the changes required to prevent such deviations in future. Team also

Why is potentially shippable product quality important

Agile teams work in iterations. During this period, they are supposed to work on product increments which can be “delivered” at the end of iteration. But how you know that the correct product was delivered? Many teams have different kinds of acceptance criteria and Definition of Done (DoD). But in many cases, this “done” is not the real “done” there might be some testing pending, some integration or review pending or anything else which prevents the actual use of the product increment. Many of these teams will need additional iterations to finish hardening their products. Many teams will implement different types of “gates” or approval steps to move to next stage. The free flow of product will be interrupted. They might end up doing mini waterfall within their agile process. Many don’t even realize this. This results in poor quality and requires additional effort to “harden” the product. Potentially Shippable Product increment The acceptance criteria and DoD should be modified

Product Backlog: Should you write everything in user story format?

I like user stories a lot. They help everyone talk the same language and results in a better product. User story alone does not constitute product requirement. User story is supposed to be a place holder for discussion which should happen between the team, Product Owner and the customer. This discussion result in a common understanding which along with the user story content is the product requirement. This format captures the essence of requirement without confusing the readers User Story is only one of the many different ways in which requirements can be represented. This is not mandatory in any Agile “process”. But many have made this mandatory. I have seen many spending countless hours trying to write the requirements in user story format when they could have easily written that in simple one-line sentence in few minutes. I have seen team members refusing to even discuss the requirement until product owner rewrote the requirement in user story format. Once I

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