Hold Core Beliefs -- Part III

In my previous post, "Hold Core Beliefs -- Act on Them", I outlined three core beliefs we act on at my organization.

• Always be delivering
• Not All Builds are Created Equal
• Consume Your Own Output

This post will will cover the last-- Consume Your Own Output

"Eat Your Own Dog Food"

You know doubt have heard it phrased this way as well.     I have never like this phrasing very much as it suggest that we taste it an know that it's "dog food" and never touch it again.    "Consuming your own output" means you do it with earnest, every day.   It's even better if you build solutions that you depend on. 

At my organization we have built both a departmental solution that all our product builds depend on.    If that system is not available, we do *no product builds*.    It is indeed a mission critical solution for a product development organization if you can not build product!  In addition to the departmental application we also have a corporate solutions that all our customers depend on.    There was some doubt that our team could handle that kind of consumption and it was not without great risk.   However, with these two solutions we put all our newest releases into these solutions.      In addition to being very good test cases, they are even better marketing with rest of the organization and our customers.

The other disarming aspect this provides you is when other consumers complain about your output with a "you can't build anything with this",  you can provide both a reference implementation and the list of bugs you wrote up against you own product.  (See Part I for how critical it is that you have an effective issue tracking system).     A "Cheers" episode that I will always remember, Coach was smoking a cigar around the bar.   When asked, "Coach do you have any idea how much that cigar stinks?"   The reply was, "Are you kidding me, it's right under my nose".   Without consuming your own output, you will never know how bad it stinks.    If it stinks, you had better know that before somebody else tells you.

Putting It All Together

If you make it a habit to do act on all three of these beliefs, deliver all the time, deliver to yourself, consume it, report against it , give feedback on which builds are better than others you will go a long way to convince your doubters.    There will be doubters, but if you act on these daily habit you may be able to ask yourself, "Has this ever been done by anyone, anywhere?"   

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."    Aristotle