I live in the Boston area, and we have had more snow in the last few weeks than we normally have. And, we have not had our normal thaws, so the snow hasn't gone anywhere. Our snowbanks at corners are high--so high that when you drive, you have to edge out into the already-narrowed streets to look around the snowbanks to see if it's safe to go. Of course, by that time, you're already halfway out into the street. You'd better commit to go!
I was thinking about that problem on my way home from the gym this morning. The streets are already narrowed from the snow, the snowbanks are high. There are times when I do not want to commit to going--such as when a bus is already too close for me to make a turn and get to a reasonable speed.
We see problems like this on our projects all the time. We need to stick our noses out to see if it's safe to try a direction before we fully commit to it. We may want to try one direction and then turn around if it's not working (not an easy thing to do on snow-narrowed streets).
We have options for managing our project risks that we do not have for our driving risks:
- Try a Hudson Bay Start. For a Hudson Bay Start, you try to push through one very small piece of functionality, and see what it took to do that. The reasons you start with a small piece of functionality is that you want to try driving across the street, not the country. You want the equivalent of "Hello World" and no more, just to see where the risks are, and what you will need to do about them.
- You can try a short iteration, say a week, maybe two, and see how far you can get. Now you have data that you can apply to the rest of the project or program.
- For a design/architecture problem, apply a design spike. Take 2 or 3 people for no more than 6 hours, and discuss and code, and see where you are at the end of that time.
In software projects, we don't have to commit the way we do when driving--which is a good thing! We can do a little more exploring and see what data we can gather. Now, based on data, we can make a reasoned decision. We don't have to make a split-second decision on snowy streets the way I do right now when driving.
Wish me luck--we're expecting another foot of snow by the time you read this. The streets will be even narrower and the snowbanks even higher. One of my options will be to take a deep breath and go for it. We don't have to do
that on our projects. Which is a Very Good Thing.
