Joel Spolsky on setting priorities
I enjoyed Joel’s most recent post, for once it wasn’t just about selling his stuff. I enjoyed Set your priorities mainly for two reasons:
1. I agree it’s probably better to try to reach more folks rather than less. We should be doing what’s important to most customers, not what’s important to *one* customer.
2. Seeing Joel doing the Extreme Programming Planning Game without admitting that’s what he’s doing, was quite enjoyable :) Joel often speaks *against* XP, though he also makes it clear that he’s never tried it. I enjoy Joel’s articles, but he has this irrational thing against XP that’s hard to understand. Which made this article, even more enjoyable in a way.
There are really two parts to it, one about doing what’s good for the customer base vs. TheBigCustomer and the other half is about what looks, talks, and walks like The Xp Planning Game.
“The nattering scorekeepers of the BDUF/Agile beauty contest are now thoroughly confused. “Was that a vote for BDUF? Or Agile? What does he want? Can’t he just take sides for once?!”"
Go Joel! One of these days he might get the whole thing ;)
