In the early 80’s, Van Halen figured out a way to make sure everything in a long list of technical specifications was implemented correctly, or at least well understood:
So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, (…) in the middle of nowhere: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”
I’m left wondering if sometimes I encounter user stories that are just like that: “if this little thing over here doesn’t work by release X, it’s time to review the whole project.” It’s a way of failing fast, without the burden of double-checking the whole lot. The problem is, finding one of these in a project where customer collaboration comes before contract negotiation, to sound a little dogmatic here for a second, is obviously a sign that trust has been broken somewhere down the line and needs to be reestablished.
So, just as Van Halen finding brown M&Ms in the backstage area was to be considered life-threatening, finding a “no brown M&Ms” story in your backlog should be a warning that the customer isn’t involved enough, or doesn’t trust the development team. It’s probably not life-threatening, but a very high priority risk.
Diego Carrion | 18-Jul-08 at 1:16 pm | Permalink
Hahahah excelente exemplo
Wes Maldonado | 19-Jul-08 at 12:30 am | Permalink
This to me sounds like a wonderful example of an Options Story. Allowing that you’re in a project that has an agile contract, is this is the conditional WHEN on the option to cancel/reconsider the project based on real options theory?
Carlos Villela | 21-Jul-08 at 5:05 am | Permalink
Hi Wes!
I guess this fits well in real options theory, but I would be wary of using a technique like this.
It banks on security by obscurity (that you’re throwing in the “no brown M&Ms” rule as a light-weight check), because if the team knows where those checks are, it would render them useless.
A more useful real option to reconsider the project would be to track a metric — or, preferably, set of metrics — and use thresholds on it to determine when that discussion is appropriate. This way, there’s no need to conceal any information from the team, and those metrics can be used for other stuff as well (reporting to investors, for instance).
Bookmarks about Brown | 10-Nov-08 at 2:30 am | Permalink
[...] - bookmarked by 1 members originally found by nzdvc3 on 2008-10-20 Comment on Brown M&M Stories by Carlos Villela http://www.lixo.org/archives/2008/07/18/brown-mm-stories/#comment-43528 - bookmarked by 1 members [...]