You should prototype more

February 27, 2017 - Marco Behler

A side effect of strict adherence to methodologies, such as SCRUM, Kanban or your fancy-methodology-of-the-day™ seems to be the endless need for discussion.

Can this really be done? - How should we split this task up? - Should we parallelise our efforts? - How long would it take? - How are we even going to estimate this? - It is going to be simple - No it is going to be damn hard! - It is impossible! - Let's plan some more! - No, listen to my 500 objections and doubts first! - Shouldn't we re-prioritize? - Let's just have one more meeting to clear things up!

What you could do instead is build a working prototype. Be a practical programmer, don't just theorize. See if you can get something done in a couple of hours.

You'd be amazed to find out what one competent programmer can do in just a couple of hours compared to a team dicussing themselves to death over days.

What's holding you back?