A starting point for a discussion on marrying Agile methods and CMMI.Another Lesson from my Not-Yet-6-Year-Old
Posted by Hillel on Jun 23, 2008 in Design, Engineering, Lesson | 1 comment
My not yet 6 year old knows the difference between "design" and "build".
The other day he was discussing train track construction with my wife and one might think what I overheard is a result of me teaching him my trade. But it wasn’t. I have no idea where he got this from, but I know it wasn’t from me. Nonetheless, I’m glad he actually knows the difference.
"Design", he says, "is just when you’re doing it on paper."
"Building is when you’re actually making it."
"First I do a design so that I know what I want it to look like. Then I build it."
I could have cried. Instead, I just said, "I need to blog that!"
So later when I went down to look at the results I asked, "Is this how you designed it?"
He said, "no, I had to work around all this mess. I didn’t feel like putting all these toys away, so I built around them all."
The lesson here is for all of us.
Just because we know the real thing will likely end up differently when we go to build, doesn’t de-value what we gain from the exercise of taking the time to design first.
Your "design" might be a test or a feature, but it came first and then reality caused adjustments.
That’s how engineering works. Engineering that doesn’t iterate, increment, test and adjust is engineering that will fail.
Hillel
My professional passion is to build high performance organizations out of companies motivated to be lean, agile, and achieve world-class results. My best clients are companies who have the courage, leadership, insight, foresight and discipline to be the best places to work, the best value to their customers and the best performing for their shareholders. I take a tough love approach and, frankly, have little patience for executives who *want* these things but expect to achieve them without putting in any effort or making any changes.
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Hillel Glazer
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this is going deep…