Sprint 4 ending (mostly) happily

Well, my dear readers, I’m pleased to report that we got things pulled together for sprint 4 and are on track to complete it successfully today, barring unforeseen complications.

One of the problems we’ve had is that our overarching mission timeline is basically impossible, and most of us on the effort have known it, either consciously or subconsciously.  Now it’s becoming much more clear and indisputable as certain key schedule dates are approaching.

We operated under the thinking that if you have an impossible goal and push hard enough toward it, at least you’ll make really great progress.  I now see the folly of this.  All an impossible goal really gets you is discouragement, disillusionment, and high stress – because if you have an unreachable goal, no amount of progress is enough!  It’s an obvious truth: If all your sprints deliver what they should, it’s still not good enough to deliver on an impossible commitment.

However, the lessons of this can be applied to our next couple of sprints, and I’m hopeful that we’ll enter those with a much more attainable set of goals which will contribute to a more realistic overarching plan.  We shall see…

Over & out!

Chris