Postmortem: an examination of a dead body to determine the cause of death.
Bring up the topic of “technical debt” to a software engineer, a product owner, a stakeholder, or heavens above, the gold owner. What happens? Do you get frowns? Smiles? Nervous fidgeting? Technical Debt is such a loaded, misused, and misunderstood term. I imagine in most conversations when the topic comes up we probably aren’t even …
…What could possibly go wrong? Here’s an idea: conduct a “pre-mortem” to prepare. The gist of the activity is to consider all that could possibly “go wrong.” Then the conversation switches to a mitigation and action plan. (Maybe the team even does a pre-mortem activity at Lift-Off or at Sprint 0?)
Opportunities for failure lurk everywhere. In projects, in code roll-outs, in team member interactions. We’re going to try a lot of new things. Some will work. Some won’t. We don’t set out to fail, but when we do, how will we handle it?
The 5 Whys is an iterative question-asking technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem. The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem. (The “5” in the name derives from an empirical observation on the number of iterations typically required to resolve the problem.)
Problem Consciousness Identity the problem that is the priority Clarify the Problem What should be happening? What is actually happening? Break the problem into individual problems if necessary If necessary user temporary measures to contain the abnormal occurrence until the root cause can be addressed. Locate the point of cause of …
