I. M. Wright’s “Hard Code”: A Decade of Hard-Won Lessons from Microsoft®

Chapter 3. Inefficiency Eradicated

In this chapter:
July 1, 2001: “Late specs: Fact of life or genetic defect?”
June 1, 2002: “Idle hands”
June 1, 2004: “The day we met”
July 1, 2006: “Stop writing specs, co-located feature crews”
February 1, 2007: “Bad specs: Who is to blame?”
February 1, 2008: “So far away—Distributed development”
December 1, 2008: “De-optimization”
April 1, 2009: “Your World. Easier”
April 1, 2011: “You have to make a decision”

As I described in October 1, 2004: “Lean: More than good pastrami” in Chapter 2, waste and evil are close companions in the work environment. Nowhere is that more evident than in group communications, a popular target of these columns, or in the proper use of unstructured time between projects. These ...