Wye Barbel

Just back from two fantastic days fishing on the River Wye with my mate Brian on the Wye and Usk Foundation Wyebank and Courtfield beats. He caught this 11 lb'er - a new personal best. We can't wait to go back.

the alchemist

is an excellent book by Paulo Coelho (isbn 978-0-7225-3293-5). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

"This is the first phase of the job," he said. "I have to separate out the sulphur. To do that successfully, I must have no fear of failure. It was my fear of failure that first kept me from attempting the Master Work.

"But arms cannot be drawn unless they also go into battle. Arms are as capricious as the desert, and, if they are not used, the next time they might not function."

"I had to test your courage," the stranger said. "Courage is the quality most essential to understanding the Language of the World."

"It is not what enters men's mouths that's evil," said the alchemist. "It is what comes out of their mouths that is."

"Tomorrow, sell your camel and buy a horse. Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and they never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die."

"There is only one way to learn," the alchemist answered. "It is through action."

Quality Software ManagementVol 1. Systems Thinking

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg (isbn 0-932633-22-6). This is the second snippet review for this book (here's the first). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

A locked-on system tends to hold itself to an existing pattern, even against logical reasons to change. … Lock-ons occur in clusters.

We particularly look for the degree of congruence between what is said and what is done.

The quickest and surest way to classify organisations into similar patterns is by the way people think and communicate.

The feedback model says you can't successfully control anything for very long without information.

errors - deviations from requirements that give you information to control the system.

The treatment of error as a source of valuable information is precisely what distinguishes the feedback (error-controlled) system from its less capable predecessors and thus distinguishes Steering software cultures from Patterns 1 [Variable] and 2 [Routine].

If the technical reviews are not detecting a lot of mistakes it could mean that … the system is working very well.

Late modules tend to be fault prone modules.

The more modular you make the system, the fewer side effects you need to consider. You trade for this effect by creating modularity faults, or faults in the interaction between modules. You never get something for nothing.

Feedback must operate in small increments, at all levels - personal, product, process, and cultural.

In such a system it is meaningless to ask who is controlling whom?

It's not the event that counts...

In Quality Software Management volume 1 Systems Thinking, Jerry Weinberg writes (on page 111)

"It's not the event that counts, it's your reaction to the event".

A bit later, on page 124 Jerry writes something which I've read several times before but for some reason this morning it really spoke to me.

Tools do not determine how they will be used. Therefore it's not the tool that counts, it's your reaction to the tool. Programming tools can be used to program without understanding, or they can be used to free the programmer's mind and hands for tasks that can't be made routine.

Jerry finishes the paragraph with:

Pattern 2 (Routine) managers buy tools to force programmers to work in standard ways. Pattern 3 (Steering) managers manage tools to empower programmers to work in effective ways.

What Did You Say?

is an excellent book (subtitled The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback) co-authored by Jerry Weinberg (isbn 0-924771-33-X). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages. I know I've snippeted this book before, but I read it again and a really good book deserves a repeat snippet. For the past year or so I've deliberately been re-reading books I've already read rather than reading new ones.

Cybernetics tells us that feedback is a relationship between two systems. ... you're a system too.

A lot of our fear of telling them comes from inexperience, or rather experience at giving feedback poorly and then getting a poor result. But getting a poor result is is such a terrible experience only if we have a perfection rule.

Over time, the process of sorting creates an environment that will not provide feedback that leads to change.

In other words, it's not so much the feedback that counts, but the struggle to get it - not the feedback, but the feeding-back.

If you keep doing the same thing why do you expect them to change what they're doing?

Say what you saw and heard.

If mistakes are not acceptable, learning is not possible.

Learning is what feedback is all about.

QCon Deliberate Practice video

Videos are like buses. None for ages then two come along at once. I did this talk, on Deliberate Practice at the QCon conference in London earlier in the year (it's only just been put online). It's an extension of my 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know entry.

In the brain of me

Here's a video of the SkillsMatter talk I did on Thursday, titled "Stuff I'm starting to know now that I really wish I'd known 20 years ago". Its loosely based on the theme of Making The Invisible More Visible, one of my entries from the book, 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. I completely botched what I was trying to say about courage. What I was trying to say was that courage is not the absence of fear.

My other SkillsMatter talk was based on Do More Deliberate Practice my other entry in the 97 Things Book.

This was the first run of quite a lot of new material so I was quite nervous, but I felt most of it went very well. Here's some of the feedback.

• Fun, informative, useful
• An interesting brain dump
• Entertaining and enlightening
• Very good. Thoughtful and interesting
• Great content - very interesting
• Great laid back presentation
• Interesting ideas and great presentation to go with it
• Well planned presentation, not just your standard powerpoint
• Very good talk. Inspiring
• Very interactive and well explained
• Clear explanations, good analogies, funny
• Fantastic
• Very good. Passionate speaker. Good insights

Becoming a Technical Leader

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg (isbn 0-932633-02-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages. I know I've snippeted this book before, but I read it again and a really good book deserves a repeat snippet.

From working with systems, I have learned that the process of change is always organic.

Organic models may be characterized by "systems thinking": the belief that event X is the outcome of hundreds of other factors, including the passage of time.

People improve their performance not by amputating their old behaviors, but by adding new ones.

There are many technical workers who enjoy wandering so much that, like Alice in Wonderland, they don't much care where they go, so long as they get somewhere. Computer programmers call this process "hacking"

In front of each plateau is a ravine.

Probably the most widespread and pernicious myth about leadership is that only Leaders can lead, where the capital L indicates that someone has been appointed to the position of leadership. ... It's only in threat/reward models that leadership and management are synonymous.

You can develop your ability to see and hear more effectively.

People aren't used to thinking in terms of relationships.

I first look for personal power, which can be converted into almost anything.

Break down big learnings into a sequence of little ones, pay attention to the efficiency of your educational strategies, and become aware of your emotional reaction to learning.