Our Obsesssion with Efficiency
Dan North doesn't believe in efficiency -- it's our obsession with efficiency that has got us into the current technology mess, and which has led almost directly to heavy waterfall processes. Dan believes that efficiency is how you let the big vendors sell their bloated technologies to the poor CIOs.
In this presentation, recorded at Øredev 2009, Dan North explores the notion of 'efficiency,' its evolution in modern systems thinking and provides a very important disctinction between efficiency and effectiveness. Within the context of agile software development, pair programming, cross-functional teams, and even experimentation may not necessarily be efficient, but they could mean the difference between project failure and project success.
About the Presenter
Dan has been writing software for over 15 years, and is a
principal consultant with technology consultancy ThoughtWorks. He
spends his time helping teams become more effective at delivering
software, and presents at conferences such as JAOO, Agile and OOPSLA on
topics ranging from learning theory to behaviour-driven development. He
has published articles in the Java Developers' Journal and Better
Software, and for CIO newsletters and the DSDM consortium.
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Comments
Jeroen Wenting replied on Wed, 2010/02/17 - 5:49am