Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 48 " Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce systems which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations . " ―  Melvin Conway ( Conway's Law ) In short :    " The product of any group reflects the structure of the group. " Even shorter:           " Architecture follows Organization " Triggered by the reference to a variant of Conway's Law in Fred Brooks's renowned book " T he Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering " (see quote of last week for a reference to Brooks's Law ). The original quote was used by Martin Fowler in his noteworthy October 2022 article   on the same subject:  " Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure . " Fowler states: "Important enough to affect every system I've come across, and powerful enough that you...

Quote of the Week 47 " Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later . " ― Fred Brooks  ( Brooks's Law ) Frederick P. Brooks, the author of the renowned book " T he Mythical Man Month: Essays on Software Engineering " that introduces this law, passed away last week (November 17, 2022) at the age of 91. [ LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 46 " I’m often wrong, but never in doubt . " ―  Ivy Baker Priest Triggered by the use of a variant of the quote commenting a  tweet by Kara Swisher on the recent Twitter turmoil: One thing I am rather enjoying in the current Twitter turmoil is @karaswisher letting it rip. „frequently wrong but never ever in doubt“ would be a fitting epitaph for many of the users (pretty much all of them men) that have most aggravated and frustrated me here over the years https://t.co/Pb5dU3tsFB — Kai Kupferschmidt (@kakape) November 7, 2022 [ LinkedIn ]  

Quote of the Week 45 " Anything lost can be found again, except time wasted. " ― Kevin Gates Triggered by the use of the quote  ―  from " Wish I Had It " song lyrics by  Kevin Gates   ―   in a comment to a post on LinkedIn by Corporate Rebels . Anything lost can be found again Except time wasted     A vision without action Is merely a dream Action is the pride It the hustle It's the persistence   ... See also related quotes by Peter Drucker and  Henry Ford . [ LinkedIn ]  

Quote of the Week 44 "Trust, engagement, and happiness are outcomes. If you treat them like your inputs, you'll never get them." ― Leandro Herrero   A quote from Herrero's book " The Flipping Point " cited here . " There is a lot of confusion around inputs and outputs in Culture Change. Many organizations agree on broad values and directions for their culture and put things like "Trust, Engagement, and Happiness" in their value statements. But this is the output, the result. The input are behaviours. "

Quote of the Week 43 " Sometimes you change the subject, and sometimes the subject changes you. " ―  Timothy Snyder   As stated in his recent blog article " How does the Russo-Ukrainian War end ".

Quote of the Week 42 " Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. " ― Frank Zappa   Triggered by the use of the quote in a discussion of "normality" in the WDR 5 "Philosophical Radio" podcast .

Quote of the Week 41 " I quote others only in order the better to express myself. " ―  Michel de Montaigne Triggered by the discussion of Montaigne's Essais in a WDR 5 podcast . A variant of the original French quote : "Je ne dis les autres, sinon pour d'autant plus me dire." "I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better."

2nd Quote of the Week 40 " Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. " ―  Steve Jobs (who passed away 11 years ago today)

  Quote of the Week 40 " Gratitude is letting the power of knowing what you have, overpower thinking about what you don't. " ―  John Maeda

  Quote of the Week 39 " Agile now means, we do half of Scrum poorly and use Jira. " ―  Andy Hunt   Triggered by the use of the quote in  Agile & Scrum Don't Work | Allen Holub In The Engineering Room Ep. 9 .

Quote of the Week 38 "You can’t have privacy without security, but you can have security without privacy." ―  Unknown   Triggered by the u se of the adage in a Data Protocol certification course on Privacy-Centered Security . The statement is also included in this October 2007 presentation (slide #3). See the 2021 " Data Privacy vs. Data Security " blog article for a discussion of similarities and differences between data security and data privacy: "In short, data privacy and data security are, by no means, the same terms. Data privacy is about proper usage, collection, retention, deletion, and storage of data. Data security is policies, methods, and means to secure [personal] data. ... Data security is a prerequisite for data privacy."

Quote of the Week 37 "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." ―  André Gide  (sometimes attributed to Voltaire)  Triggered by the u se of a variation of the quote in a reply to a S.B. Kaufman tweet: "Admire those who seek the truth, but fear those who claim to have found it." -- Every Wise Person Ever — Christopher Ryan (@ThatChrisRyan) July 13, 2022

Quote of the Week 36 " You are never one feature away from success and you never will be. " ― Teresa Torres Triggered by  Teresa Torres '  use of this statement (pg. 117) in her 2021 book " Continuous Discovery Habits " in the introduction to Chapter 7 " Prioritizing Opportunities, Not Solutions ". "For too long, product teams have defined their work as shipping the next release. When we engage with stakeholders, we talk about our roadmaps and our backlogs. During our performance reviews, we highlight all the great features we implemented.  The vast majority of our conversations take place in the solution space . We assume that success comes from launching features. This is what product thought leader Melissa Perri calls "the build trap ." This obsession with producing outputs is strangling us.  It's why we spend countless hours prioritizing features, grooming backlogs, and micro-managing releases. The hard reality is that...

Quote of the Week 35 " If you expect others to agree with you, why aren’t you trying more often to agree with them? " ―  Olivier Sibony Triggered by Sibony's statement in a McKinsey Quarterly article " Sounding the alarm on system noise "  promoting the book " Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment " he co-authored with Daniel Kahnemann and Cass Sunstein. Olivier Sibony:  "There is an almost philosophical thing that I would like leaders to think about, which is this: If you expect others to agree with you, why aren’t you trying more often to agree with them? Why do so many people, especially in leadership positions, seem to believe that their role is to express a unique, distinct, even original point of view on what needs to be done and, at the same time, find it troubling when others don’t agree with them?"

Quote of the Week 34 " Dashboards are astrology for execs . " ― Taylor Murphy Triggered by Taylor 's tweet : dashboards are astrology for execs — Single Source of Taylor (@tayloramurphy) August 16, 2022

Quote of the Week 33 " With great responsibility comes no power . " ― Product Manager's Motto accor ding to Dan Olsen Triggered by the use of the quote in the  Enterprise Product Management presentation by Dan Olsen at Lean Product Meetup on May 11, 2022. Dan also tweeted the same more than five years ago. Spiderman's motto: With great power comes great responsibility. Product manager's motto: With great responsibility comes no power. #prodmgmt pic.twitter.com/cBc7tH5Khe — Dan Olsen (@danolsen) December 7, 2016 The origin of Spiderman's motto dates back to the first century BC according to Wikipedia .

Quote of the Week 32 " A goal without a method is cruel. " ― W.E. Deming Triggered by the use of the quote in Bryan Finster's 2021 " How to Misuse DORA DevOps Metrics " presentation. (See also my  blog article on the topic). From Deming's 5 Rules of Management : 1. Put fun back into work. “The prevailing system of management has crushed fun out of the workplace.” 2. Give people a reason to come to work. “We are here to make another world.” 3. Don’t leave people hanging. “A goal without a method is cruel.” 4. Push responsibility down the line. “Quality is everyone's responsibility.” 5. Encourage and celebrate innovation. “Innovation comes from the producer - not from the customer.”

Quote of the Week 31 " The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. One reason for this is, of course, that nobody pays for a  ‘ product ’ . What is paid for is satisfactions . " ― Peter Drucker Sometimes paraphrased as "The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it is selling." Triggered by the use of the quote when  revisiting Clayton Christensen's work in the context of the Jobs to Be Done Innovation Theory . For more information on JTBD see:  https://jobs-to-be-done-book.com  

Quote of the Week 30 " Discovery is seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought. " ―  Albert Szent-Györgyi Triggered by a @ProfFeynman tweet . [Update: 09/17/2025] The original quote is attributed to Arthur Schopenhauer.

Quote of the Week 29 "I’m not young enough to know everything." ― James Matthew Barrie (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) Triggered by a reply to a @wilddueck  tweet .

Quote of the Week 28 " Proximity does breed creativity within a group of people." ― Kara Swisher Triggered by Kara's claim in a recent Pivot Podcast episode: . @karaswisher explains that there are some real advantages to working in-person in the office: “Proximity does breed creativity within a group of people.” Stream Pivot here, presented by @Salesforce + 👉 https://t.co/wo1l2mMrMP pic.twitter.com/coSLj8xTsS — Pivot Podcast (@PivotPod) June 3, 2022 Unfortunately, I could not yet find a research study that fully backs this opinion. While the creativity myth   "Creativity tends to be a solitary activity" has been challenged, " face-to-face verbal interaction is typically not an effective way to tap the creative potential of a group "   according to  Alone versus together: Finding the right balance for creativity (researchgate.net) . [Update: July 17, 2022 Proximity does indeed cause contagion within a group of people. ]

Quote of the Week 27 " By far the greatest flow of newness is not innovation at all. Rather, it is  imitation ." ― Theodore Levitt "Imitation is not only more abundant than innovation, but actually a much more prevalent road to business growth and profits." Triggered by the inflationary u se of the term "innovation" in marketing new products. Theodore Levitt already diagnosed the same more than half a decade ago in his 1966 Harvard Business Review article "Innovative Imitation" summarized here . [ Post | LinkedIn ]

Quote of the Week 26 " The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than is needed to produce it." ― Brandolini's Law (aka Bullshit Asymmetry Principle ) Triggered by the u se of the quote in Tony Fadell's recent book " Build ".

2nd Quote of the Week 25 " Creativity is a spiritual experience, not a mental experience." ―  Deepak Chopra Triggered by the interview with Deepak Chopra @ OpenText World EMEA 2022 in Munich. See  Creativity (blog-on-innovation.blogspot.com)  for a brief overview of the concept of creativity summarized by another Chopra quote: " To harness true creativity, you must silence the conditioned mind."