Full-Court Press and the Evils of Local Optimization

Great post from Bill Mill. Go on, read it. When you’re done, here’s the key quote:

The Warriors could optimize like crazy for the press, but they’d be training and working and trading and drafting to be, at best, a pretty good team.

This is why those that preach from the gospel of Lean try to impress upon us that local optimization is an insidious evil. It often looks good from a certain viewpoint, but it can hide other improvements that would provide a more holistic benefit. It can even prevent you from reaching your true goal.

Tags: agile, lean, pitfalls