Scrum and Jeff Sutherland

Priorities

"He who will defend everything defends nothing." -- Frederick the Great of Prussia

Product Development

Whenever you're making something, you want to put in in the hands of those who are actually going to use it as fast as possible. You want to do this even before you make 20 percent of the features. You want to do this with something that delivers at least a tiny bit of value. I call this a "Minimum Viable Product," or MVP.

Risk

The three most common types are market risk, technical risk and financial risk. Or, to put it another way : Do people want what we're building? Can we actually build it? Can we really sell what we build?

Medco case study (Pg 114) :

It took the company nearly six months to figure out that they couldn't do it in time. Their calculations showed that, in the best-scenario, they'd deliver the system at least one year late. Probably more.

Why it took them six months to figure out that they couldn't do it in time is something that bears examination. It wasn't that they weren't smart, or didn't have the right teams in place, or even the right tech. It wasn't that they weren't working hard or being competitive. You don't get to be the biggest company in your sector without doing all that.

It was because they made a very basic mistake. They thought they could plan everything ahead of time. They spent months of effort making the sort of detailed plans that seem plausible - that are laid out in pretty charts and include carefully precise steps and almost always describe a fictional reality.

As I've said before, the very act of planning is so seductive, so alluring, that planning itself becomes more important than the actual plan. And the plan becomes more important than reality.