Hans Samios' Personal Lean-Agile Knowledge Base

“The key, though, is not to manage by metrics but to use the metrics to understand where to have conversations about what is not getting done.” Gary Gruver et al, “The Practical Approach to Large–scale Agile Development.”

“Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” – Pablo Picasso

“It is useful to do detail planning, but you always want to use it with a short time horizon because detailed planning is very perishable. You do not want to hold a large inventory of detailed planning because you are throwing money away when you do that.” – Don Reinersten.

“Yes, estimation is fraught. It is inaccurate, and politically dangerous. But we do have some knowledge and the project deserves to have it.” – Ron Jeffries tweet 2013–03–18.

“Agile is about simplicity. Agile is not simple. If you think it's simple, wait and see.” – Ron Jeffries

“The First Law of Wisdom Acquisition – It is much easier to identify another's foolishness than to recognize one's own.” – Norman Keith from “Project Retrospectives”

“If you want people to act like adults, you need to treat them like adults.” – R. Semler

“If it’s hard but important to do, do it more often!” – Unknown

“Agile, Scrum, XP, Kanban, Lean: The same elephant, different points of view” – Ron Jefferies

“Innovation simply doesn't happen in the tiny shards of time in the midst of incredibly busy work lives.” – Gary Hamel “ARE YOU REALLY SERIOUS ABOUT INNOVATION?”

“And I find it little bit odd that a 50 year old woman in Bangladesh often has an easier time getting experimental capital than the average first line employee in a global 1000 company.” 1000's of microfinance projects are being done with no collateral, and little paperwork.

“We say that code is of high quality when productivity remains high in the presence of change in team and goals.” Ward Cunningham

“Technical debt is the stuff around code that keeps it from being quality code – that makes it hard to change.” – Dan Rawsthorne

“If you can't do it with a card you'll really mess it up with a tool” – Dave Thomas, Keynote at Agile 2010

“Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex, intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple, stupid behavior.” Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa

“There is no such things as as an IT project; there are only business project that involve IT.” – UK Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary.

“If you’re thinking people don’t like to make changes to their behaviors, just watch a teenage girl get her first cell phone. The changes in her life will be profound and dramatic. And she’ll enjoy every moment of it.” – B.J. Fogg on perception that people don't like change. To which Jared Spool adds:

“If people love change, why do our users complain when we make changes to our designs? Well, it’s not because of their aversion. It’s because we did it wrong.” – Jared Spool

“The define/build/test component team is the fractal on which agile development is based.” – Dean Leffingwell through Dan Wuescher.

“A computer does not substitute for judgment any more than a pencil substitutes for literacy.” – Robert McNamara

“A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.” – Bertrand Russell

“Clean code is simple and direct. Clean code reads like well–written prose. Clean code never obscures the designer’s intent but rather is full of crisp abstractions and straightforward lines of control.” Grady Booch

“I could list all of the qualities that I notice in clean code, but there is one overarching quality that leads to all of them. Clean code always looks like it was written by someone who cares. There is nothing obvious that you can do to make it better. All of those things were thought about by the code’s author, and if you try to imagine improvements, you’re led back to where you are, sitting in appreciation of the code someone left for you—code left by someone who cares deeply about the craft.” – Michael Feathers

“You know you are working on clean code when each routine you read turns out to be pretty much what you expected. You can call it beautiful code when the code also makes it look like the language was made for the problem.” Ward Cunningham

“Clean code is not written by following a set of rules. You don’t become a software craftsman by learning a list of heuristics. Professionalism and craftsmanship come from values that drive disciplines.” – Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin

“Cost cutting is just one of the steps in the process toward extinction.” – Haiko Meelis

“If you don’t care about the number of defects, I can get it done on any schedule you’d like!” – Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin

“For success, like happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as an unattended consequence of ones personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.” – Victor Frankl – Neurologist and Psychologist.

“Your project, the whole project, has a binary deliverable. On scheduled completion day, the project has either delivered a system that is accepted by the user, or it hasn’t. Everyone knows the result on that day. The object of building a project model is to divide the project into component pieces, each of which has this same characteristic: Each activity must be defined by a deliverable with objective completion criteria. The deliverables are demonstrably done or not done.” – Tom Demarco – Controlling Software Projects (1982)

“Focusing is saying yes, right? No. Focusing is about saying no. You've got to say, no, no, no,” – Steve Jobs

“Never mistake motion for action.” – Ernest Hemingway

“Testing is the infinite process of comparing the invisible to the ambiguous in order to avoid the unthinkable happening to the anonymous.” – James Bach

“I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my telephone.” – Bjarne Stroustrup, the designer and original implementor of C++.

“Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda.

“The conversation surrounding the estimation process is as (or more) important, than the actual estimate.” – Dean Leffingwell.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication” – Leonardo daVinci

“We need to make sure that our people weed their own garden.” – Mike McQuery, CEO Mindspring.

“Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” – Steve Jobs

“When lost in the woods, if the map doesn't agree with the terrain, in all cases believe the terrain.” – Swiss Army Survival Guide

“Product Management is like have 100 children at Christmas, but only 1 present under the tree – you are going to leave 99 children unhappy.” – Cory Von Wallenstein, Dyn Inc

“Management is not focusing on Technical Debt and probably won't until it is too late. And we have seen what happens when people in charge don't focus on debt haven't we?.” – Dan West.

“A little debt speeds development so long as it is paid back promptly with a rewrite.” – Ward Cunningham, developer or the Technical Debt metaphor. Note that this is not necessarily a negative thing, only when you don't repay quickly is it a problem.

“Fallor ergo sum” – St Augustine. “I err, therefore I am”.

“Inertia is the residue of past innovation efforts. Left un–managed, it consumes the resources required to find the next generation innovation.” – Geoffrey Moore, Dealing with Darwin

“Cost cutting is just one of the steps in the process toward extinction.” – Haiko Meelis

“We can always shoot ourselves in the foot. The amazing thing is how quick we are able to reload and do it again.” – Bob Thurber

“You can fight reality and lose, but only 100% of the time.” Byron Katie

“Things are the way they are because they got that way.” – Gerry Weinberg

“So much of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to work.” – Peter Drucker

“If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg.” – Abraham Lincoln.