(This post describes the first yak category. You might choose to start with the Taxonomy of Yak Shaving intro.) Black Yak, aka Attack Yak. (quotes are from yakbreeder.com) When you feel that your task is 80% complete, these yaks form the next 80%. They are the distance between “works on my box” and “this is …
Yak Shaving is: doing seemingly-unrelated tasks to get some real task done. The name has obscure roots and doesn’t matter; the key is that it makes you think, “Why would you do that?” Yak shaving can be: I want to make dinner, but I’m doing stairs; moving objects around in order to clear a path …
This is the text of a short keynote for O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference 2017, New York. Power.Software developers have a particular power over the daily lives of our users. A hospital the nurse interacts with the patient, and they record those interactions in software. Software impacts the nurse: some things might be easier, but others …