“Take many more much smaller steps”. It’s blind advice, to people whose detailed context one really doesn’t and can’t know. But in the great majority of cases, blind though it may be, it’s actually terrific advice. a cornerstone of successfully harvesting the value of change. Let’s break it down: why it goes against our intuition, why it actually works, and why it covers so many contexts of change, from code, to product, to organization, to the world.

GeePaw Hill is an independent software development coach. A geek for nearly 40 years, he has been doing, teaching, and coaching software using the various techniques of agility since the late ’90s. He has worked with large teams and tiny ones all over the world, creating everything from satellite control modules to desktop graphics to that old standby, it-puts-the database-on-web-browser. As a speaker, he is well known for a humorous mixture of irreverence and insight. GeePaw lives in central Virginia at an intentional community, with his glorious and ever-growing family.