Still, it’s not quite as bad as “In the real world …”. You have to admit that.

“What color is the sky on your planet?” is right up there too.

If you ever catch me using any of these phrases, call me on it. I’m in the book. The Mars book.

It doesn’t matter who owns the backlog, the responsiveness of the development team to real needs of customers will be in direct proportion to the length of the backlog.  This is a supply chain issue, and in general, the shorter the supply chain, the faster its response.

I’m not clear whether the manufacturing analogy applies well to a software backlog, which is, after all, just a list of things one might do, not a bunch of partly-built products tying up capital and storage space. I have suggested previously that the usual list of priorities that software people have should be eliminated, as in my article Petition the King. 

My view there was that it is better to have a hard line that says “These things will be done and no others,” than a huge soft list that makes people think they are, well, “on the list”. It seems very clear to me that there should be such a line, so that managers who want things can be made vividly aware that they aren’t going to get them any time soon. That’s the sort of thing managers should manage.

But if someone wants to keep a giant list elsewhere of every idea they’ve ever thought, and their reasons for not doing anything about those thoughts, is that inherently bad? Mary’s note suggests that and I can make up arguments as to why it is, if not bad, at least useless:

• Few people make any use of such lists anyway;
• If it’s a good idea you’ll think of it again;
• Sorting the list takes time that could better be spent;

I could go on forever. I have vast quantities of writings, notes, cards, stored up and only rarely do I manage to glean anything out of them. The most common result is to find a few cards that I thought I’d like to write about. I’m reminded what cool ideas they are, and I move them to the front of my stack. Then I don’t write about them because I have better things to do. They slide back in the list at a rate of one day per day.

Some people expect to find value in recording why they did not choose to do some good idea. Bless me (I was going to use another verb there), if I started listing why I don’t do things it would be a really long list. Why didn’t I ask her out? Oh, yeah, right, I’m married. I forgot that. 

Some people claim to have discovered really good ideas in the list and to have brought them forward. Well, as I said above, I do that too, and then they still don’t happen. I suspect most everyone has a really great story of a fine treasure they discovered in the attic. I also suspect that the odds are that most everything up there really is trash, and that of the five wonderful items you brought down to clean up and use, four of them are now waiting to be taken back up.

Some people even claim that their organization has such a list and that they make really good use of it. Well, fine. Have a ball. I think that’s rare, and I think it should be out of the face of the people who are actually doing something. 

I still don’t know the whole answer, as if I ever would. I do sense some bad things about a long work backlog, and I have a feeling that a list of Might Have Been or even Do Someday is mostly a waste of time. But is it really harmful to progress in some way, as Mary suggests? If so, why?

Now a little pressure helps me get things done, I freely grant that. But it only works if I get them done: otherwise the pressure just frustrates me, makes me feel bad, makes me slower still.

For the business, the value of Agile is that you know where you are and that gives you a good idea of where you will be. If you’re working on stretch goals, you don’t know where you will be, you have some under-pressure wish-driven fantasy picture of where you will be. All you know for sure is that you won’t be that far along. You have doomed yourself to disappointment.

As managers, we need our developers to find their joy in getting things done. We will not prosper if they get off on the joy of heroic effort, or the joy of slamming in last-minute fixes that will save the project if only they are successful. 

People under pressure take shortcuts. In software development, shortcuts show up when poorly crafted code slows us down and piles bugs upon bugs. We don’t need that.

We need to know that when something is reported done, it is actually done, working, complete. We need to know that it won’t have to be revisited, taking up an unknown amount of time in the future.

Pressure makes that impossible. Pressure robs us of what we need.

To get what we need, to get things done in a predictable fashion, to get things done well, we cannot tolerate stretch goals. We need to value commitment to a result that can be attained. Stay away from stretch goals, that’s my advice.

When we make decisions based on any kind of “true faith” approach, be it religion, Waterfall, or Agile Zealotry, we know we are right. If things don’t work out as we hoped, it’s not our fault. In the case of religion, well, Gozer the Destructor, Gozer the Traveller, Gozer the Gozarian just didn’t grant our wishes. Gozer knows best, just like Mom.

In the case of other faith-based activities like Waterfall or Agile Zeolatry, it’s some guy who wrote a book who knows best, and clearly we just didn’t do it right. The author knows best, just like Mom.

All the faith-based approaches also seem to include a clause regarding the worthiness of the beseecher and the format of the beseeching. If your beseechments are not up to snuff, you don’t get what you wanted. If you yourself are not up to snuff, you don’t get what you wanted. If Gozer knows best — and Gozer does — you still might not get what you wanted. Because Gozer knows best, you are supposed to be happy about that.

The Agile methods as understood by the true believer do not rely on Gozer or Ken Schwaber or Ron Jeffries in order to work. They rely on feedback. You’re supposed to do stuff, look at what happens, and change what you do!!!

I kind of wish we could have government working that same way, where it was at least vaguely understood that cause and effect actually work, and that what happens is not due to the behind-the-scenes machinations of Gozer. Gozer is, after all, the Destructor. If we did pay attention to what happens and viewed it as a result in part of what we did, maybe we could all learn similar lessons.

Oh well. A man’s got to have a dream.

Q: Senator, what is your position on launching a pre-emptive attack against Georgia?

A: The protection of this great nation is my highest priority.

Q: Yes, but what about an attack on Georgia?

A: My opponent’s views on the economy are retrograde and misinformed.

Whenever we’re just going along and suddenly we see a duck, it is mandatory to say “Oh, look, a duck!”. This is well-known. Even though it derails the conversation, we just have to do it.

So if we were to carry a throw-down duck, when the going got tough, we could throw down our duck and say “Oh, look, a duck!”

I hope this idea is useful to you and I look forward to seeing a lot of ducks at the next conference.

I’m very interested in people’s reactions to the material, and welcome ongoing comments here following this article, or via email. Remember to include [ron] as part of your subject in email to me, unless you’re sure you’re already on my whitelist.

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I’ve seen third-graders run better elections than this. 

The thing that bothers me most, though, is that if you sow hatred, distrust, and fear, you’ll get hatred, distrust, and fear.

We are better than this. How can we make these people work together to make the world, and our lives, better?