Friday morning I was at a seminar taught by Jason Taylor, CTO at Allegiance. We were discussing how dev team velocity and product quality can compete for our attention; sometimes we trade one for the other. Jason mentioned that he’s a fan of competing metrics, and some neurons connected in my brain.

I’m a big believer in measurement. As the old adage goes, you can’t improve what you don’t measure. Next time someone urges you to change a behavior, or tells you she’s going to, ask what measurement of change is being proposed. If you get an unsatisfying answer, I predict you’ll also get an unsatisfying outcome.

I’m also a big believer in balance, as I’ve written about before. Good software balances many considerations.

Besides these existing predispositions, I’d recently read a blog post by Seth Godin, cautioning about the need to choose wisely what we measure. And I’ve been digesting The Fifth Discipline, by Peter Senge, which advocates wholistic, systemic thinking, where we recognize interrelationships that go well beyond simplistic, direct cause-and-effect.

All of these mental ingredients Continue reading →