{"id":496,"date":"2013-02-18T13:25:03","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T18:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.agilityfeat.com\/?p=496"},"modified":"2013-02-18T13:25:03","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T18:25:03","slug":"4-ways-perfection-is-killing-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/blog\/2013\/02\/4-ways-perfection-is-killing-you\/","title":{"rendered":"4 ways Perfection is killing you"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"This<\/a>Whether you are a bleeding edge startup or a large corporation running agile teams, here are four ways that you may be abusing agile concepts and letting perfection kill your chances of success.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Product Owner Perfection<\/h2>\n

In an agile team, the Product Owner (PO) is the \u201cvoice of the customer\u201d to the development team.\u00a0 They play an incredibly important role in the success of the project.\u00a0 The PO will end up writing most of the user stories that describe the features the team will work on next, and equally important, the PO sets the priority of what to work on next.<\/p>\n

Implicit in this prioritization duty is that the PO is also the person who says \u201cgo\u201d and approves the deployment of new functionality to production.\u00a0 So what happens when your product owner keeps saying \u201cjust do this one more thing and then we\u2019ll deploy\u201d?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For a startup, this sort of \u201call or nothing\u201d attitude will not just kill your project, it will destroy your business.\u00a0<\/strong> It will take you so long to satisfy that perfectionist Product Owner that you will end up missing your window of opportunity with customers.\u00a0 Somebody else is going to build a less perfect version of your idea first, and they will win the customers before you even have a chance.<\/p>\n

For a large company, Product Owner perfectionism is still bad.\u00a0 It means that your schedules are going to slip<\/strong>, major initiatives will not be completed on time, and your agile team is going to look a lot like a very slow waterfall team<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Developer Perfection<\/h2>\n

Good developers are an essential part of a successful project, and so it\u2019s easy to go overboard and hero-worship their technical prowess.\u00a0 But sometimes that desire to be the best developer out there can kill your project<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Developers (in general) are very creative folk who take immense pride in their work.\u00a0 The best ones also really enjoy playing around with the latest technologies and trying new things.\u00a0 But even if you\u2019re a non-technical leader, you can\u2019t give them free reign or they will have so much fun building shiny objects that they will never get the project done on time.\u00a0 I\u2019m a developer by training \u2026 trust me on this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Even if you can\u2019t debate the details of technical decisions being made, you need to set clear boundaries for the team to work within.<\/strong>\u00a0 If there is a fixed date you must have the functionality done by, communicate that from day one.\u00a0 Make it clear that meeting that date is the most important thing, and you are willing to compromise on anything but that date.\u00a0 The same is true for other project constraints such as budget or feature sets.\u00a0 You can\u2019t have everything, so pick one constraint at the beginning, and make it clear to the development team that is the constraint that must be met above all else.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re project has no constraints (yeah right), then make one up.\u00a0 You need to give the developers those guardrails.<\/p>\n

Scrummaster Perfection<\/h2>\n

Are you agile enough?\u00a0 I mean, are you truly Agile?<\/strong>\u00a0 If you hear this a lot from your newly minted and Certified Scrummaster, then you are at risk of Scrummaster Perfection.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be agile methods like Scrum or Kanban, or even the Scrummaster as the culprit.\u00a0 Perhaps we should just call this Process Perfection<\/strong> instead.<\/p>\n

Any process should be judged by the results it produces.<\/strong>\u00a0 Not the process results (aka documents and meeting rituals), but the actual value delivered to customers<\/strong>.\u00a0 Are customers happier with us than they used to be?\u00a0 Are they getting more value from us than in the past, and are we delivering that value more efficiently?\u00a0 Than our process is working.\u00a0 That\u2019s all that matters.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It just so happens that agile methods tend to do the best job of delivering more customer delight more efficiently.\u00a0 That\u2019s why agile is popular.\u00a0 But they can be abused and if you spend all your time worrying about adhering to some agile book you read, then you will not deliver much customer delight.<\/p>\n

Please remind your Scrummaster and team that agile methods are not meant to be prescriptive \u2013 they are a set of guidelines and principles.<\/strong>\u00a0 You can (and should) constantly change your process in order to better serve your customers.\u00a0 As long as you are still adhering to the basic tenets of the agile manifesto, you can declare yourself agile.<\/p>\n

From your customers\u2019 perspective, they don\u2019t even need to know you\u2019re agile.\u00a0 They don\u2019t give a rip.\u00a0 You should just be doing a better job for them than you used to.<\/p>\n

Quality Perfection<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve already complained about perfectionism from our product owners, developers, and scrummasters, so who\u2019s left for me to alienate?\u00a0 I know, let\u2019s pick on testers for a moment!<\/p>\n

I am all for testing<\/strong>, both manual and automated.\u00a0 I am also all for high quality software.\u00a0 I hate it when a bug keeps me from doing something important on another company\u2019s web site, so why should I accept anything less on my own?<\/p>\n

The thing is \u2026 all bugs are not created equal.<\/strong> If I can\u2019t accomplish core web site functionality on the most commonly used browsers, then yes, that bug has to be dealt with quickly and should be caught before it\u2019s deployed to production.<\/p>\n

But should bugs in older browsers keep you from deploying software now?\u00a0 It depends on your customer base, but probably not.\u00a0 You can probably live without a fully functional site in IE 8<\/strong>.\u00a0 Or you can change the code for that browser to be simpler and not have as rich functionality.<\/p>\n

If the bug is in an obscure part of your administration console that very few users notice, then maybe it doesn\u2019t need to be dealt with right now.<\/p>\n

The point is, many testers have a problem with perfectionism.<\/strong>\u00a0 I find this to be particularly true with testers in large companies because in the past they were judged by the wrong metrics<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

A tester should not be judged by how many bugs escaped the test environment and made it to production.\u00a0 A tester should be judged the same way as the whole team \u2013 are we making our customers happy by getting them the right features at the right time with an appropriate level of quality?<\/p>\n

Unless you\u2019re building safety-critical systems, you don\u2019t need to deliver perfect quality.\u00a0\u00a0 You only need to deliver just enough quality, focused on the right areas.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is your perfectionism holding you back?<\/h2>\n

What is keeping you from deploying that code today?<\/strong>\u00a0 What is keeping you from making that deadline next week?\u00a0 It may just be endemic perfectionism in one or more parts of your team.\u00a0 Go find that person right now and reset expectations with them before it\u2019s too late.\u00a0 You can still save that project if you act now!<\/strong><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Whether you are a bleeding edge startup or a large corporation running agile teams, here are four ways that you may be abusing agile concepts and letting perfection kill your chances of success. Product Owner Perfection In an agile team, the Product Owner (PO) is the \u201cvoice of the customer\u201d to the development team.\u00a0 They […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[4,88,59],"tags":[5,32,66,55,33,15,27],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","yoast_head":"\n4 ways Perfection is killing you - AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2013\/02\/4-ways-perfection-is-killing-you\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"4 ways Perfection is killing you - AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Whether you are a bleeding edge startup or a large corporation running agile teams, here are four ways that you may be abusing agile concepts and letting perfection kill your chances of success. 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