Quips

The quips below are nuggets of wisdom that I've collected over the years from many sources such as mentors, books, blogs, etc. I find value in them because I can frequently relate a lesson from these quips to a given — usually business — situation. A few are my own but most aren't. Some have been modified to better suit my liking.

Testing shows the presence, not the absence of bugs. — Dijkstra
Customer research is a flashlight when we feel like we're in the dark — Jason Fried
Never confuse motion with progress
The more your tests resemble the way your software is used, the more confidence they can give you.
Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
The easiest way to learn is the hard way. — Me
There's no crying in baseball and there are no ties in prioritization.
Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.
Hope is not a strategy.
Panic is not a plan.
The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. — Good to Great
With just weeks of work you can save hours of planning.
Be the role, get the job. — Steve McMichael (passing along wisdom he had previously been gifted)
In order for OO design to protect you from the customer you must know what the customer is going to do and customers always do the other thing. (Uncle Bob)
OO is about managing dependencies by selectively inverting certain key dependencies in your architecture so that you can prevent rigidity, fragility, and non-reusable code. (Uncle Bob)
Bad code slows us down. And why did we write bad code? Because we had to go fast. (Uncle Bob)
The leadership you work under is more important than the perks your company offers. — First, Break All the Rules
Conventional wisdom is conventional for a reason: It is easier. — First, Break All the Rules
Batch size is a leading indicator of cycle time. (citation)
Don't get so busy draining the flood that you aren't able to fix the leak.
The goal is long term success not short term gratification.
You don't have to be faster than the bear. You just have to be faster than your slowest friend.
The solution to ambiguity is not more policy. It's good judgment.
Context is worth 100 IQ points. — Keith Zoellner
You can't fit 10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag no matter how small the turds are.
You don't get to shit in a room and leave. — Keith Zoellner
You can't have conviction without rationale. — Keith Zoellner
When you find yourself in a hole… stop digging.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Laziness is the father.
Talk less. Say more.
The clarity of your guidance gets measured at the other person's ear, not at your mouth.
What's the least amount of work we need to do to learn the next most important thing?
No plan survives contact with the enemy.
Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that they look forward to the trip. — Winston Churchill
Never half-ass two things, whole-ass one thing. — Ron Swanson
Code tells you how; Comments tell you why.
Branching is a high interest integration credit card.
Heroism leads to zeroism.
The ideal story is one that cannot be broken down any further.
Think big, start small.
Every responsibility a team cedes to increase its focus becomes a new cross-team dependency.
The faintest pencil is better than the sharpest memory.
You can't learn if you can't fail.
I didn't fail, I learned.
If it hurts, do it more often.
Simplify, automate, repeat.
The goal is to get it right, not to be right.
Improvement of daily work is more important than daily work.
Left unchecked, technical debt will ensure that the only work that gets done is unplanned work!
What can you do in your organization to add a little rudder far from the rocks to prevent needing a lot of rudder next to the rocks? — Turn the Ship Around!
Headcount is a vanity metric.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Be skeptical; don't be cynical.
Aim for perfection, accept excellence.
Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.
Watch the work not the workers.
this should never happen.
People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas. — Steve Jobs
Culture is a reflection of values.
Leaders must sometimes make lonely decisions.
Disagree without being disagreeable.
Rework steals focus. Lack of focus causes rework.
Haste makes waste.
Healthy teams aren't built in a day. But they are built each day.
Brook's Law: Adding more people to a late project will make it later.
Goodhart's Law: Any metric if made to be a goal will cease to be a good metric.
Repetition is the key to learning. — Keith Zoellner
A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor.
Greatness is idiosyncratic.
You can't half-ass your way to excellence.
Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.

The 7 habits:

Be Proactive:The proactive approach to a mistake is to acknowledge it instantly, correct and learn from it.
Begin With the End in Mind:Your most important work is always ahead of you, never behind you.
Put First Things First:Effective leadership is putting first things first. Effective management is discipline, carrying it out.
Think Win-Win:When one side benefits more than the other, that's a win-lose situation. To the winner it might look like success for a while, but in the long run, it breeds resentment and distrust.
Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood:Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
Synergize:Synergy is better than my way or your way. It's our way.
Sharpen the Saw:We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw.

The Business Principles of the Toyota Way

Long-Term Philosophy
1. Principle 1: Base your management decisions on a long term philosophy, even at the expense of short term financial goals
The right process will produce the right results
1. Principle 2: Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface
2. Principle 3; Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction
3. Principle 4: Level out the workload (heijunka)
4. Principle 5: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time
5. Principle 6: Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment
6. Principle 7: Use visual control so no problems are hidden
7. Principle 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes
Add value to the organization by developing your people and partners
1. Principle 9: Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others
2. Principle 10: Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy
3. Principle 11: Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve
Continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning
1. Principle 12: Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (genchi genbutsu)
2. Principle 13: Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly
3. Principle 14: Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen)

Deming's 14 Points of Management

Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.
Adopt the new philosophy. We are in a new economic age. Western management must awaken to the challenge, must learn their responsibilities, and take on leadership for change.
Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.
End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag. Instead, minimise the total cost. Move toward a single supplier for any one item, on a long-term relationship of loyalty and trust.
Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.
Institute training on the job.
Institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines and gadgets to do a better job. Supervision of management is in need of overhaul, as well as supervision of production workers.
Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.
Break down barriers between departments. People in research, design, sales, and production must work as a team, to forsee problems of production and in use that may be encountered with the product or service.
Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyong the power of the work force.
1. Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
2. Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
1. Remove barriers that rob the hourly worker of his right to pride of workmanship. The responsibility of supervisors must be changed from sheer numbers to quality.
2. Remove barriers that rob people in management and in engineering of their right to pride of workmanship. This means, inter alia, abolishment of the annual or merit rating and of management by objective.
Institute a vigorous program of education and self-improvement.
Put everybody in the company to work to accomplish the transformation. The transformation is everybody's job.