Agile principles talk about hiring great people and getting out of their way. They emphasize that self organized teams produce the best results. The problem is, by focusing so much on individuals and teams they also tend to devalue the role of good management and good leadership outside of those teams.
Metrics: With great power comes great responsibility
I had a few bad experiences with metrics early in my career that made me leery of metrics in general – so leery that I have to confess to shying away from almost all of them. I was fine with the standard agile metrics. Burn-down charts and velocity seemed harmless enough – but beyond those? The thought of proactively using metrics and reports to illuminate issues and drive improvements would always trigger worries about how drastically things could go wrong.
Continue reading “Metrics: With great power comes great responsibility”
The power of less specific goals
I’m not a big fan of SMART goals. For as long as I’ve been involved in goal and objective setting for myself and others, I’ve been advised that the right way to construct objectives is to make them SMART: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-Bound. None of this sounds bad on the surface, yet I recall in the early 2000’s making an impassioned plea to my VP at the time against SMART objectives, and I’ve brought up concerns (though less passionately) to other managers since. Why would I argue against such a widely accepted best practice?