Top all-time · #9515
Reinertsen & Associates
Company blog · reinertsenassociates.combusinesseconomics
Reinertsen & Associates is the company blog at reinertsenassociates.com, writing about business and economics. Since 2008, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 8 times, most often “The Cult of the Root Cause”. The last post was in 2020, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Don Reinertsen's site for his writing on product development flow, queueing theory and cycle time, and his argument that tech debt should be treated as deferred work.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Product Development Consulting & Training
Most-linked posts?
- The Cult of the Root Cause2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-10-18
- Technical Debt: Adding Math to the Metaphor2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-11-10
What Hacker News says?
XP - http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ ShapeUp, as n42 commented - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31534642 Product Development Flow by Don Reinertsen - http://reinertsenassociates.com/books/ Queueing Theory - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queueing_theory
Comment linking /books/
on “The age of Scrum is over”Submitted The Cult of the Root Cause as a story · 180 points
HN discussionThe most interesting cases are complex systems where a fault/even results from a combination of multiple factors. In that case, asking for a "root" cause is unproductive, and a better question to ask would be: how might the system be patched, with the least pernicious side effects. This is also why I don't always like the drive for more "accountability". As can be seen in the other HN thread on the front page about…
Comment linking /the-dark-side-of-robustness/
on “The Cult of the Root Cause”Submitted Technical Debt: Adding Math to the Metaphor as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDon Reinertsen http://www.reinertsenassociates.com/ author of "Developing Products in Half the Time" and "Managing the Design Factory" has a great quote about managing product priorities that bears on this. "Priorities: Last Refuge of the Innumerate What is our highest product development priority, cycle time or unit manufacturing cost? To even ask this question, suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of product de…
Comment linking /
on “Ask YC: How To Prioritize”Submitted Timeless Tips from Reinertsen as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAlways liked Reinertsen’s post on reframing tech debt to deferred work. “When we refer to postponed work as technical debt this automatically biases us to assume that both ongoing and future costs are more certain than they really are. This, in turn, causes us to overestimate these costs, leading us to be overly cautious about deferring work. If it is your intention to bias the decision against postponement, this is…
Comment linking /technical-debt-adding-math-metaphor/
on “Code Is Not Technical Debt”Submitted The Cult of the Root Cause as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
