Matt Edgar @mattedgar@mastodon.me.uk

Worth a watch in any org that's pondering how to make the flip from managing by predictive milestones to leading and learning with product management https://twitter.com/johncutlefish/status/1201759100889001985?s=19

Applications for our NHS Digital graduate scheme close tomorrow. Apply now for Sept 2020 starts in software development, data science, user-centred design, product & delivery management
https://twitter.com/NHSDigital/status/1199976220911255553

Can't wait for this. A must-buy for our NHS Digital design team book trolley
https://twitter.com/LouiseDowne/status/1199593083555471360

Train guard admonishing fellow passenger: "You don't want to buy the m-tickets, you want the e-tickets, that's the default setting"

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970.pdf

Unable to easily cut production code, Royce advocated 'simulation' to reduce risk: "... the pilot effort could be compressed to three months perhaps... [the personnel involved] must have an intuitive feel for analysis, coding, and program design. They must quickly sense the trouble spots in the design, model them, model their alternatives... and finally arrive at an error-free program."

(that's my footnote, not his, just to be clear)

Of course, Royce was working at a time when code and compute cycles were many orders of magnitude more costly than today, so he was unable to extend the full benefits of iteration as far as continuous delivery to users

... adding iteration!

And a footnote on the origins of "waterfall" in a 1970 paper by Winston Royce
Dr Royce drew the original waterfall to illustrate a set of problems which he proposed to solve by...

Agile understands that we always learn by doing. Either unintentionally, clumsily and expensively. Or intentionally, with control, and efficiency.
The choice is yours

"What if we're building a bridge," did I hear you say?
1. You're probably not
2. You never know what you'll find until you start digging
3. Even bridges come with stress sensors and smart motorway signs these days

Of course there will be exceptions, but it's nearly 2020 and they get fewer by the day. Most everything is instrumented. Software is eating the world

Internalise these values if you want to benefit from modern user-centred design, self-organising multidisciplinary teamwork, and modern engineering practices

If so, agile principles are your friend and your guide, not just for building software, but for the whole way you make strategies and shape portfolios

Empirical or predictive? Leaders, you've got to pick a side.
Do you want to create a learning organisation in which everyone is in touch with users and the environment, at a sustainable cadence of continual improvement?

Truth be told, this week I got a tiny bit tired of explaining that "agile" and "waterfall" are not equally valid delivery styles, but radically different theories of how things get done in the world

If there isn't yet a list of services covering your area, ask who's working on it, and what help they need to complete and sustain this simple idea whose time has come