Navigating Uncertainty in Software Development: Effective Planning Techniques
summary
Four concrete techniques: use the Cynefin Framework to classify work as clear, complicated, complex or chaotic and pick deterministic versus adaptive planning; plan to learn by mapping Rumsfeld knowns/unknowns and timeboxing discovery (teams often get useful answers in an hour); gather evidence with an evidence wheel, user interviews, quick usability tests and analytics (examples: a rewrite where one UI path proved unused, and a slow-search fix revealed by observation); map options with story maps to pivot after each release.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Introduction and context
- 1:14Human response to uncertainty
- 3:57Reframing work habits
- 6:26The four-point strategy
- 7:16Categorizing problems
- 13:23Avoid one-size-fits-all
- 14:18Planning to learn
- 19:48Buffer for the unknown
- 20:35Prioritizing with evidence
- 26:46Gathering real-world data
- 41:46One hour of evidence
- 42:33Keeping options open
- 47:00Adapting through options
- 47:37Closing and resources
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