Have you heard about the Poppendiecks? Mary & Tom? I did, but somehow I've skipped reading their books until now. It's not like they've written zillion of them (because they've written just 3 AFAIK), but it seems that when they release something, they do a helluva good work - I've just read their latest book & I love it.
"Lean Mindset" - their latest accomplishment - what is it about? It's about thinking on your own, about reasoning & common sense in IT. About collaboration, priorities, efficiency & proper setting of focus to build a right product.
Some ideas presented are extremely simple, but I've never thought about them in this way - take the shareholder value maximizing as the key target and how poor idea it is. Simply brilliant!
Aaand ... I'll stop right here. I'm not going to present the abbreviated version of the book - it just doesn't make sense, because I wouldn't be able to do it as well as Poppendiecks did anyway. The takeaway from this post is:
- if you really want to learn about real agility, not some cheap weaseling
- or completely contrary - if you still believe in magic book of _M_ethodology doing your job for you
- and you haven't read any Pippendiecks' book until now ...
... just stop reading this post & read "Lean Mindset" instead.
P.S. I love the chapter about the design (it was the 3rd one, I think) & authors' opinions on requirements & desirable end-user / client input. I've came to the same conclusions and I do my best in evangelizing that as much as I can.
