The 7 Non-Negotiables of Winning: Tying Soft Traits to Hard Results

Chapter 9

Creating a Lasting Legacy

You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.

—Henry Ford

Think about your favorite author or writer and how his or her works most resonate with you. Now think about this: Have you considered that you are the author of your life—and that you can write yourself a good one?

At Fishbowl we have adopted the Agile methodology with Captains Kevin Batchelor and Heber Billings. Any software manager will tell you that one great developer is worth five good ones. I will not disagree with this statement as an axiom. However, this simply isn’t our style at Fishbowl—because as I’ve emphasized throughout this book, we are in the people business. While we insist on building great software, we are much more interested in building great people. To reconcile this requires a good deal of patience and a commitment to a principle known as the Agile Prime Directive. It states:

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

—Norm Kerth, Project Retrospectives: A Handbook for Team Reviews

We have become fairly adept over the past several years at producing excellent products with rough talent. I think this evolution came from the notion that we at Fishbowl don’t really enjoy working with ...