Salvatore Denaro

I cannot remember the last time I had a cough. Sure I get that twice yearly change-of-season cold, and an occasional sinus infection or tickly throat – but a real, honest-to-goodness cough? Years. From favor-"ette": {grown up} cough syrup This is a cocktail. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but this isn't medicine. It's a stiff drink.

Have you heard the joke about the guy looking for his keys under a street light when he lost them in the parking lot because "that's where the light is"? This is how I feel about measuring effort rather than results. Effort is where the light is. You have time estimates from planning and you have time spent on a burndown chart. You have lines of code and number of commits. You have green tests and passing builds.You have loads of data that show what effort was made and how long it took. All of that is really easy to measure and that might be why so much effort goes into measuring the easy to measure thing. Here's the thing. All data would still be there if the only reason why you did the thing was that it was cool and you (or the product owner) wanted to and the feature provided no benefit to the stakeholders. This is why I am making an effort to write stories that specifically state expected measurable results as part of the acceptance criteria, beyond just nor