I just read this excellent blog post and it reminded me of
something I tried to
describe to some of my team mates.
http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2008/08/14/quintessence-the-fif...
My story goes something like this:
A marathon runner realizes that he has a couple of small stones in his
shoes right before the race begins, so he takes off his shoes to get
them out. While he is doing this the race starts.
His coach has always trained him to run the race "10 feet at a
time";
just focus on getting through the next 10 feet and the race will take
care of itself.
Since the runner is very literal he considers how he can run the next
10 feet the fastest: 1) Spend 1 minute putting his shoes on 2) Start
running. He decides to start running and is happy with how much
progress he has made in the first 5 seconds of the race.
After a couple of miles, the runner is starting to slow down. His feet
are cracked and torn from running on the rough pavement. He is BEHIND.
He considers stopping and putting his shoes on, but DOES NOT HAVE
ENOUGH TIME. He is behind and just need to keep getting the next 10
feet of the race run.
And so it goes...
This is exactly what focusing on the short term at the expense of the
real time-frame of the project feels like to me. We make decisions
that help no one and that we know are dumb just to get a feature done
this week.
See also, "Important vs Urgent".
