As inanimate as it was gigantic A Fragment by John Ruskin blog.ayjay.org And among such false means largeness of scale in the dwelling-house was of course one of the easiest and most direct. All persons, however senseless or dull, could appreciate size: it required some exertion of intelligence to enter into the spirit of the quaint carving of the Gothic times, but none to perceive that one heap of stones was higher than another. And therefore, while in the execution and manner of work the Renaissance builders zealously vindicated for themselves the attribute of cold and superior learning, they appealed for such approbation as they needed from the multitude, to the lowest possible standard of taste; and while the older workman lavished his labor on the minute niche and narrow casement, on the doorways no higher than the head, and the contracted angles of the turreted chamber, the Renaissance builder spared such cost and toil in his detail, that he might spend it in bringing larger stones from a distance; and restricted himself to rustication and five orders, that he might load the ground with colossal piers, and raise an ambitious barrenness of architecture, as inanimate as it was gigantic, above the feasts and follies of the powerful or the rich. architecturesizescale
Beware SAFe, an Unholy Incarnation of Darkness An Article by Sean Dexter seandexter1.medium.com The Lean Portfolio Management function that controls funding, are given sole authority to approve which Portfolio Epics move into each stream. Epics are not explanations about a problem that needs to be solved. They are pre-formed ideas about how best to solve those problems. Right away we can see signs of the old-school mindset of viewing teams as a “delivery” function instead of a strategic one. The high level thinkers come up with ideas, and the low level doers execute on those ideas. Ignored is the possibility that those closest to the work might be best equipped to make decisions about it. Escaping from this misguided mindset is a core goal of Agile thinking that SAFe fails to remotely accomplish. SAFe is oriented around volume, not value Why Scrum is killing your productAgile Scrum is not workingThe management strategy that saved Apollo 11Design Systems, Agile, and Industrialization agile
SAFe is oriented around volume, not value In all this focus on volume metrics, estimation, and churning work through the pipeline, the concept of what’s actually valuable or successful is easily lost. It’s often assumed that more work shipped out the door must be “value”, even if the experience of the product is actually suffering and users are not benefiting from the additional features. metricsquality