Five for Friday – March 8, 2024
So much cool stuff going on that I’m not even going to talk about the State of the Union speech last night. Instead – slightly less controversial, and more geeky stuff for me to share.
- I was on the Quality Bits podcast with Lina Zubyte recently. It was a lot of fun, and possibly worth checking out.
- Danny Faught has a long-overdue (but fascinating) update in his writing on Jerry Weinberg – The Rise of the Tabulators.
- In case you missed it, Agile is Dead. But it’s not. But it is. Either way, this article from Dave Thomas is spot on.
- I wrote about OKRs (aka Big Rocks) recently on the other blog. I loved this blog post – and adored the title. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, OKRs are just the cheap juice everyone gulps down first.
- Finally, once upon a time, I helped one of the first teams at Microsoft use git for their source control (after way too long using a perforce fork). I know that <for reasons>, msft would never have used Mercurial, but I finally understand Why Facebook doesn’t use Git. It’s probably worth noting that the recounted conversations with the git team were a lot like discussions at Microsoft. Caring about the customer goes a long way.
That last editorial aside, this week’s FfF is complete. Have a great weekend, enjoy yourselves, and stay safe (and warm).
Thanks for the feedback, Alan. I wasn’t sure that anyone else would be as fascinated by punch card tabulators as I was. That’s a part of our roots that I was surprised to see that we hardly ever talk about.
OKRs are just Grove’s Intel’s take on how to do Drucker’s Management By Objectives. That article meanders a bit and says nothing about it.
A better refutation is from Deming’s perspective. Given your ancient history in testing, it may appeal to you:
https://colorprocesscontrol.typepad.com/printing_color_process_co/2012/08/a-critical-look-at-management-by-objectives-mbo.html
This recent conversation in HN applies, too:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39614752