Delivery
Turning intent into shipped software, predictably.
Planning, batch size, queues, and cadence. The unglamorous mechanics that separate teams that ship weekly from teams that ship eventually.
The weekly demo
A standing demo where working software is shown to real stakeholders is the cheapest forcing function in engineering management. Mandatory, never cancelled.
0-5 · 5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150
Planning without fortune-telling
Plans are for alignment, not prediction. Commit to outcomes and dates separately, and be explicit about which one you're holding fixed.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Estimation is a conversation, not a number
The value of estimating is the disagreement it surfaces. The number itself is nearly worthless, and you can forecast better from throughput than from anyone's guess.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
WIP limits and the queues you can't see
Most delay in software is waiting, not working. You need one rule people will actually keep: nobody starts something new while the review queue is red.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Roadmaps that survive contact
A roadmap is a communication artefact with a shelf life. Now / Next / Later beats a Gantt chart because it tells the truth about certainty.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Saying no, and the true cost of yes
Every yes is a permanent liability that arrived disguised as a one-time cost. What an organisation declined is a truer description of its strategy than what it built.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Shipping culture vs launch culture
Launch culture optimises for a moment. Shipping culture optimises for a slope. Only one of them compounds, and the difference shows up in what people choose to work on.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
Small batches, or nothing else matters
Batch size is the master variable of software delivery. Almost every other improvement is downstream of shipping smaller things more often.
0-5 · 5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+
The product trio, not a feature factory
A roadmap owned by one function is a request queue. Product, design, and engineering have to co-own the why before any of them can be trusted with the how.
5-20 · 20-50 · 50-150 · 150+