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Discussion on: Dealing With Unknowns In Software Development

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Kristian R.

Maybe this sounds thoroughly vague or stupid, but as far as I see things by now, managing unknowns in software is the very thing you need agility for. Not "agility" as in "Agile" (capital A) which often seems to be misunderstood as yet another formally described project management process these days, but rather "agility" in terms of following the four principles of the agile manifesto, encouraging a load of communication between relevant people and, in each and every situation, try to find ways to minimize the unknowns as good as possible - and find good solutions that suit your organization and working culture to address the remaining unknowns. This might differ between different unknowns, and of course I am convinced it will differ between organizational units depending upon how they work: If you have a very small (startup'ish) dev team with a product owner closely tied to both development and market requirements, this will be different than in a larger environment where there's a bigger distance between development teams and sales / marketing, for example. Just as an idea. :)