Liz Keogh

• Because our product managers don’t know what they want, they find out from the customers. They sometimes get this wrong.

• Because our product managers don’t know everything about systems, they invite other experts to become stakeholders in the project. The stakeholders get it wrong.

• Because I don’t know what to code, I find out from our product managers. We sometimes get this wrong.

• Because I make mistakes while writing code, I work with an IDE. My IDE corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because I make mistakes in understanding the existing code, I use a statically typed language. The compiler corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because I make mistakes while thinking, I work with a pair. My pair corrects me when I’m wrong.

• Because my pair is human and also makes mistakes, we write unit tests. Our unit tests correct us when we’re wrong.

• Because we have a team that is also coding, we integrate with their code. Our code won’t compile if we’re wrong.

• Because our team makes mistakes, we write acceptance tests that exercise the whole system. Our acceptance tests will fail if we’re wrong.

• Because we make mistakes writing acceptance tests, we get three amigos together to talk through them. Our amigos will tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because we forget to run the acceptance tests, we get our build to run them for us. Our build will tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because we didn’t think of every scenario, we get testers to explore the system. Testers will tell us if it’s wrong.

• Because we only made it work on Henry’s laptop, we deploy the system to a realistic environment. The tests will tell us if it’s wrong.

• Because we sometimes misunderstand our product manager and other stakeholders, we showcase the system. Our stakeholders will tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because our product manager sometimes misunderstands the people that want the system, we put the system in production. The people who want it tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because people notice things going wrong more than things going right, we don’t just rely on opinions. We use analytics and data. The data will tell us if we’re wrong.

• Because the market keeps changing, even if we were right before, eventually we’ll be wrong.

• Because it costs money to get it wrong, we do all these things as often as we can. That way we are only ever a little bit wrong.

• Don’t worry about getting it right. Worry about how you’ll know it’s wrong, and how easy it will be to fix when you find out. Because it’s probably wrong.

• It’s OK to be wrong.