Five for Friday – September 6, 2019

As you may or may not have noticed, I took a few weeks off from FfF. I moved houses, then I traveled, then I went on a short vacation, and then I got sick. But now I’m mostly settled in and back on my regular routine.

Here’s some stuff I found.

  • I’m reading Drift Into Failure – and it’s fascinating. Here’s the first of what probably won’t be the last of quotes I’ll share from the book.
    But in stories of drift into failure, organizations fail precisely because they are doing well – on a narrow range of performance criteria, that is – the ones that they get rewarded on in their current political or economic or commercial configuration. In the drift into failure, accidents can happen without anything breaking, without anybody erring, without anybody violating the rules they consider relevant.
  • For numerous reasons, I’ve been talking more and more about testing without testers. This is a post from a few years ago (but new to me) that speaks to my cause. The Breakup
  • Most of you know this, but a lot of teams do bad things under the guise of ‘Agile‘, and fail. Here are some reasons why – How Agile Fails In Practice
  • Now that you know you have things to fix, read John Culter’s post on So You Want To Fix Something
  • While I recommend you just read all of Johanna Rothman’s posts, her post on the fit of management in Agile recently is quite good and worth reading.

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