This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz
by Jared Richardson.
Original Post: Whisker Goals: Ask for Less. Get More.
Feed Title: Agile Artisans
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The Made to Stick authors (Dan and Chip Heath) have been discussing whisker goals (as opposed to stretch goals) as a way to get a person (or team) moving forward. And it makes a lot of sense.
How often have you decided to "lose weight" and set such a high goal that you never got started? Or asked your team to start using Cobertura for code coverage, and asked for 90%... only today you have 1%?
Setting large goals feels like a smart idea. It's something the team can aspire to. It's a Big Goal that can help motivate us. The idea makes perfect sense on paper,but the reality is different. Most people, when faced with a big goal, give up. They won't even try.
Life is tough. We get "stretch goals" everyday, in every part of our lives. Your To Do list around the house is probably filled with them. Time with your family. Features at work for the next release. Cleaning up old code. Adding automated tests.
So when one more set of stretch goals comes across our desks, we tend to ignore it.
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