Mar
04

Running on Empty (2)

Setting the record straight

Vera has been reading my blog. She’s not happy with what I wrote in the “Running on Empty” entry. Vera was there, she knows that it didn’t happen like I described in the “Go Home!” section.

I wrote “As usual, I had made the rule and I thought it didn’t apply to me. I still worked long hours. I got stupider by the day. Unfortunately, there was noone to tell me to go home. I had sent them all home.

That’s not completely true… There was someone who told me to go home. Vera told me to go home, many, many times.

That’s me: blind, deaf and stupid

When you’re overloaded, you get stupid and your eyesight and your hearing goes. You no longer see the solutions, you don’t hear the advice people give you. Especially good advice like going home on time or doing important work in pairs.

One of the reasons I was overloaded, was that I had to take over a project from someone else. He had left because he was completely burned out trying to make this project work. I thought he was really stupid getting burned out, when everyone knew that working at a sustainable pace worked better. Yeah, that was really stupid…

Advice to anyone who works with Vera: just do as she says.


Tags: Agile, XP, Heijunka

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