The Bike Shed

445: Working Iteratively

Oct 29, 2024

Explore the perks of working iteratively and how it can lighten cognitive load while minimizing costly errors. Witness a personal lesson learned from a recent workplace mishap, and dive into the pressures surrounding incident management during major releases. Delight in the beauty of autumn and its transformative spirit, with anecdotes about fall traditions. Discover how smaller, focused tasks enhance productivity and support effective code reviews, all while finding a balance between striving for perfection and making incremental improvements.

40:06

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Quick takeaways

Adopting an incremental approach to development reduces cognitive load and allows for easier testing and review processes among team members.

Conducting retrospectives after incidents fosters a blame-free culture and helps teams focus on systemic improvements rather than individual errors.

Deep dives

Importance of Incident Retrospectives

Evaluating incidents through retrospectives plays a crucial role in fostering an open and blame-free culture within engineering teams. After encountering a significant incident during a planned migration, the team conducted a reflective session where all involved parties discussed the factual occurrences and potential improvements. This approach focused on systemic issues rather than individual mistakes, emphasizing that such incidents often stem from multiple failures across the system. By encouraging this dialogue, teams can improve monitoring and response processes, ultimately leading to better resilience in the face of future challenges.

Intro

6min

Reflecting on Incident Management and Release Decisions

2min

The Beauty of Autumn: A Transformative Return

2min

Embracing the Transformative Spirit of Fall

2min

Nourishing Iteration: The Comforts of Incremental Development

16min

Embracing Iteration in Development

13min

Does having smaller, more frequent iterations help to ease your cognitive load? During this episode, we discuss the benefits and challenges of working iteratively and whether or not it can prevent costly errors. You’ll hear about juggling individual pieces effectively, factors that incentivize and de-incentivize working iteratively, and how Joël gauges whether or not a project should be broken up into smaller tasks. It can be hard to adopt small iterations, and this conversation also touches on the idea of ‘good enough code’ and discusses how agility can reduce the cost of making changes. Tuning in, you’ll hear about some of the challenges of keeping up with changes as they evolve and why it is beneficial to do so. You will also be equipped with a thought experiment involving elephant carpaccio to build your understanding of working iteratively, explore the challenge of keeping up with evolving changes, and more. Thanks for listening.

Key Points From This Episode:

Stephanie shares a recent mishap that happened at work and what she learned from it.
Unpacking pressures and other aspects that may have contributed to the error.
Joël’s recent travels and his fresh appreciation for fall.
The cost of an incident occurring, how this increases, and the role of code review.
Benefits and pitfalls of more regular code review.
Why working with smaller chunks of work is helpful for Joël’s focus.
Juggling individual pieces effectively.
Factors that de-incentivize working iteratively such as waiting on 24-hour quality control processes.
How working iteratively can facilitate better communication.
Why Joël feels that work that spans a few days should be broken up into smaller chunks.
The idea of ‘good enough code’.
How agility can reduce the cost of making changes.
Using the elephant carpaccio exercise to bolster your understanding of working iteratively.
The challenge of keeping up with changes as they evolve and why it is beneficial to do so.
Involvement from the team and the capacity to change course.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

WorkOS
Working Incrementally
Working Iteratively
Elephant Carpaccio Exercise
The Bike Shed
Joël Quenneville on LinkedIn
Joël Quenneville on X
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