
The road is rarely straight and narrow but regardless, it is a road!
Thriving in the post-COVID-19 lockdown world will mean you have to be efficient, dependable, and effective. Effectiveness is the third core capability and is the hardest to define. The dictionary definition of effectiveness is “the degree to which something is successful in producing a desired result”. Translating that definition a bit for software development yields effectiveness as an assessment of whether a process, product or project is doing the right thing when compared to the goals of the organization. Being effective means having a consistent understanding of what the right thing is regardless of how dynamic the environment is. Needless to say, in the software world, no one has been able to consistently get needs and requirements nailed down for any length of time (we will reserve that topic for later). When I asked Andrew Jarr, Scrum Master at iovation (during a LinkedIn messaging conversation) what his approach was he responded, “I tend to think of an effective team in terms of delivering good outcomes for their stakeholders, how well/safely they communicate as a team, and how well individuals grow. Assessing effectiveness requires agreed upon proxy measures. Examples of proxy measures often include: (more…)