Start starting, stop stopping
Oh dear! It has been just over two months since my last post... That wasn't supposed to happen (or not happen).
I used to work with an Agile coach, who would quote "Stop starting, start finishing". I'm not sure who the original quote was by, but the message was to try and progress on work the team currently had in progress so that we could get those tasks completed, before picking up new ones. I really liked this approach because it encouraged us to get involved in the work of our teammates. It wasn't just a case of, development is done, lob it over the wall to QA. The idea was that you stick with the task until it is shipped and support in any way you can and use it as an opportunity to gain context in the work of other members of the team. We used our judgement for this, it wasn't appropriate for all situations, but at some point during the sprint, when we realised we had too much work in progress, we would say "let's stop starting and start finishing".
All that aside, that wasn't the original intention behind the post. This morning, I finished off a bit of work from yesterday and then I thought, "what would I be interested in working on this morning?". I started thinking about writing a blog post, but then I got lost in research about what the best platforms are in 2025 and whether I should event bother blogging etc. So that's what made me think of the idea for this post. Starting starting, stop stopping. Just write, somewhere you already know, i.e. my existing blog.