Only Pigs Can Talk

I’m reviewing an excellent presentation [pdf] on the agile software development landscape when two bullet points on Scrum’s daily meetings stopped me:

• Chickens and Pigs are invited.
• Only Pigs can talk.

It took Googling to decipher the metaphor.

Though it goes against my earlier stifling team work post, identifying who’s involved and who’s committed is an excellent way to focus energies and keep the project on task.

Take a look at your projects – are you involved or committed? Where can you be more committed and less involved?

Further in the presentation:

“The error [is] typically 100 times more expensive to correct in the maintenance phase than in the requirements phase.”- Software Engineering Economics.

Reminds me of a story in the automotive design world. Traditionally, automotive designs were modeled in clay. Clay hardens as time passes. So, the longer a decision was put off, the harder – literally – a change is. Just because software doesn’t have a physical manifestation, doesn’t mean it’s not as time-sensitive as clay.

Two final bits of insight from the Extreme Programming camp:

• If the future is uncertain, don’t code for it today.

• Do the simplest thing that can possibly work

In other words: Do as Little as Possible.

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