Simplify

While visiting a good friend over the holidays, I couldn’t help but notice a plaque she had prominently displayed in her kitchen. It read, simply, “SIMPLIFY.” As we take inventory of our projects going into the new year, perhaps we should step back and take heed of one of the Agile Consortium’s guiding principles, which echoes this same admonition: “Simplicity—the art of maximizing the amount of work not done – is essential.” Are we wasting effort on work that really isn’t necessary? Can we re-channel unnecessary effort into results that truly have value? Perhaps as we head into 2008 we should seek to shift the mindset that projects be judged by what it takes to complete them…to a frame of mind where accomplishing the most with the least is the goal.