Last week, I met David Putman of Exoftware. We were both attending Mary and Tom Poppendieck's Lean course in Scotland.
At the end of day 1 we went out for dinner at Wagamama's - a noodly sort of place.
I was sitting opposite David admiring his x-p-something-or-other t-shirt when he pointed to one of Mary's as-yet-unused chopsticks and said, 'Imagine this chopstick is a project. This end represents the start of the project and this end the finish'.
start --------------------------- finish
I examined the chopstick and said okay.
'Now', he said, 'where abouts on this project timeline would you least like to find defects?'
I looked closely at the chopstick. Is this a trick question? Obviously the worse place to find defects is near the finish of the chopstick - err project - when the cost of reworking the code is highest and you've got the least amount of wiggle room to recover. I pointed to the finish end of the chopstick and said 'Here!'.
start --------------------------- finish
^
here!
He nodded and I quietly sighed in relief. There was no trick.
'So', he continued, 'How do you find defects?'
'By testing', I said.
'And, when you plan your waterfall projects, when do you plan to do the testing?'
start --------------------------- finish
start -analysis-design-code-test- finish
'At the end', I said, pointing to the spot on the table where the chopstick had been, since Mary had reclaimed when her first dish arrived.
'So', he smiled, 'You PLAN' - he emphasised the word plan - 'to find defects at the worst point of the project, when you are at your most vulnerable and the defects are the most expensive to fix?'.
'Um, yes, I suppose so', I said, before pointing out that I've recently "reframed" myself as an unemployed writer and "planning" simply doesn't fit with my Bohemian lifestyle anymore.
