If you are an agile software development practitioner or have worked in the industry around these practices, you are free to skip ahead. This chapter is meant as an introduction to all things agile, lean, and product/service innovation for those who are unfamiliar with the terms, values, practices, and philosophy. It is a tough chapter…
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Being replaceable in work may not seem like a good thing. But I definitely think it can be. Those who disagree tend to think about replaceability in a negative sense. Who wants to think there is someone else out there that can do your job as well (or better) than you? A lot of this comes from a scarcity mindset: that there are only a set number of jobs and once they are taken that’s it. But new jobs are created all the time as long as there is a case that demands it.
I’ve been accused of being a narcissist before. Not in those exact words, but I will never forget the conversation. I was 25 and a good friend of mine and I were talking. She finally said (in a rare pause of my banter), “Natalie, you always talk about you and never ask about me.” Wow, that one hit hard and I felt guilty and ashamed. I had never thought about it before. I wondered where my baby-boomer parents had gone wrong in raising me as a millennial snowflake (who was nothing but extraordinary) who didn’t know the true definition of meaningful discourse. Ever since then, I’ve put a concerted effort into making sure that I ask the other person I’m talking to questions about themselves. It’s a constant reminder in my awkward conversational brain – “ask them about their day, weekend, year…yeah—that’s perfect!” We often run into a narcissism problem in product development, too, and it can stem from fear and shame.
Talking to a team about carryover at a daily scrum meeting led me into a very uncomfortable confrontation with someone who already didn’t like me. Not sure why but I ascertained it had something to do with the unhealthy relationship between product and technology organizations and the fact that product was pushed by sales to make commitments on behalf of the teams that were essentially never met on time (more on that issue in a later post). So a contentious confrontation – read on…
Let’s talk about cost of delay – the cost of having NOT done something. Basically the opportunity cost of choosing to do one thing over another. Seems simple enough but it’s not.
