/\ndy: How *Not* to Eat An Elephant

/\ndy: How *Not* to Eat An Elephant

So no, "one bite at a time" is the wrong answer.  It's not sustainable.  Instead, the first defense against "How do you eat an elephant?" is to ask the clarifying question, "WHY ARE YOU EATING AN ELEPHANT???"  

Too often, even on agile projects, we take whatever absurd requirement is handed to us and fire up the story cards and the burndown charts and get cracking on it.  It would be a nice first step to dig into the absurdity first, and see why we think we need to make elephant kabobs.  Maybe the real requirement was misheard, and they actually said "add a font and some knobs"  

But it is incumbent upon you to ask.  And if the person you ask replies with "because they told us to" (or something similarly Nuremberg-esque), go up one and keep asking.  

And if it turns out that you do, in fact, need to eat an elephant, then you're going to need  a lot of friends.  Or a lot of Tupperware.

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