Things that sound fast, but are slow
“I’m in the zone!”
“I’m not going to start that story until we have all of the requirements for it.”
“I can build that myself in a weekend.”
“Let the Tester validate that, we’ve got more stories to code.”
“That’s just a checkbox!”
“Just have [new team member] add some unit tests so we can stay focused on building new features.”
“We’ll get our code coverage up to 100% faster this way.”
“I’ll just work through lunch.”
“Hey, [executive] signs our checks. If he says to do it this way, you do it this way.”
“We don’t have to do that, it’s not in our process.”
“Our velocity went way up this sprint! Great work, team.”
“Just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“That’s not a defect, there’s nothing about it in the requirements.”
“We can refactor later, we’ve got a deadline to hit.”
Things that sound slow, but are fast
“Hey, c’mere. Look at this.”
“What version of this could we ship today?”
“Let’s work on that together.”
“Hold on—write a test for that first.”
“Who is this for?”
“Let’s get [new team member] in on this feature, we could use a fresh perspective.”
“We need this to be a habit—let’s make time each week to practice it together.”
“There’s my timer. I’ll be back after a break.”
“What do you think will happen if we tried it this way instead?”
“Let’s build it both ways, and see which one works better.”
“If we could only deliver one thing this week, what would it be?”
“Is doing it this way still working for us?”
“Great catch! I didn’t even think to use it that way.”
“Let’s take a few minutes to leave this better than we found it.”
(See also: things that feel fast but are slow)
