Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals: #18 The Measurements Are More Reliable! (愚人買鞋）
Fixation with rules blindly.
This article is one of the “Chinese Idiom Stories for Software Professionals” series.
Story
A man in the State of Zheng decided to buy himself a new pair of shoes. Before he went to the store, he took careful measurements of his feet and noted the dimensions on a piece of paper.
But he forgot to bring his note along. At the store, he found a pair of shoes he liked very much. He was about to try them on when he suddenly remembered that he had left his note at home.
“I’ve left my measurements at home,” he told the storekeeper. “I’m now going to get them. I’ll be back soon.”
Immediately he hurried home to fetch the note. By the time he returned, the store was closed, so he could not buy the shoes after all.
The next day the man related the incident to a friend. The friend asked, “Why didn’t you try them on to see if they fit?”
“Well,” answered the man, “I ‘d rather trust the measurement than myself.”
Meaning
This story satirizes those who follow certain inflexible rules too strictly and do not know how to adapt to the circumstances.
Examples in Software Development
There are many examples of following wrong practices strictly in agile software teams, such as managing software development based on ‘velocity based on estimated user stories points”. Not convinced, you can burst those fake agile coaches/scrum masters’ bubble by asking one simple question, “How do you manage regression testing?”
The Fact: programmers introduce many regression errors while working on new user stories, changes or bug-fixes. Just one major issue might offset your ‘perfect velocity’ by days or even weeks.
So, a good software manager will focus mainly on automated regression testing, not on the story points.
Tip: Once real automate regression testing process is set up, the teams’ productivity will double or triple in a short time, which makes worrying about ‘story-point based velocity’ even more silly.
A more like the idiom situation is software teams’ fixation with user stories in Jira rather than the customers.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Agile Way to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.