(2020-08-18) GeePawHill Iterative User Value

GeePawHill: on Iterative User Value. We want our work to come in stories of about one team-day and a half, but that’s not much time, and we need to provide a steady flow of value to our users.

First, two strategies that are outside the scope of this conversation, but are critical to getting the ball rolling: 1) fat-trimming in the first place, and 2) resisting the RAT (rework avoidance theory).

These two strategies inter-operate to really get us to what I want to talk about today, which isn’t so much strategic as practical tactics.

1. Go from manual to tedious to easy to automatic

A classic example of this would be a password reset

2. Go from one, to many-same, to many-different.

3. Go from show to edit-add-delete to manipulate

4. Go from 50% to 75% to 90% to 100% of the cases you want to handle.

present only the actions that are permitted for the given case

5. Go from ugly to okay to branded to lovely.

6. Go from two flow-paths to gradual elaboration of a complete flow graph.

Implement one flow all the way through, with an opt-out to require human intervention on every page. Gradually add choices.

Some keys to making this kind of thing work might help.

First, you want a "keep it running" attitude.

Second, you want to keep your eyes on what we’re going to do today, not what we’re going to do next week.

Third, learn your brownfield technique, including TDD, refactoring, incremental switchover, and so on.

Fourth, don’t go dark, and don’t go backwards.