(2022-01-19) Jeffries Strawberries Are Best When Small

Ron Jeffries: Strawberries Are Best When Small. We want to know ASAP whether whatever we’re doing is good or not so good. Short cycles. And, because we’re doing software, we want to know that about our software. We want that all the time, every day from beginning on, and every moment spent where the software is not good, or we don’t know how good it is, is a bad moment.

That’s what Hill’s MMMSS is all about. That’s what Red-Green-Refactor is about. That’s what short Sprints are about. That’s what pulling one story at a time is about. That’s what slicing stories thin is about.

GeePaw Hill says in his lead-in to Many More Much Smaller Steps: A professional chet I know, when asked to give blind advice, always says this: 1) That’s too much rice. 2) That’s not enough garlic.

For me:
That’s not enough steps;
That step isn’t small enough.

There I’ll be, trying to take tiny steps, which pretty much guarantees there will be a lot of them, and next thing you know, I’ve been at a red bar for ten minutes, then twenty, then an hour, then two.

I almost always know where I’m going when I start one of my articles, and I almost always wind up somewhere else. The same is true when I program

the Strawberry of the morning is:
That feedback cycle is too long;
That’s not enough steps.

Or, and I just made this up:
Take Many More Much Smaller Steps.