teams

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From Quality Software Management: Vol 3. Congruent Action

In all Steering (Pattern 3) organisations, the team is the fundamental unit of production.

From The Psychology of Computer Programming

In the end though, it's their method of learning that distinguishes teams from groups… team members always have a common goal, regardless of the product - the goal of helping each other learn to perform better.

From Pair Programming Illuminated

Widespread use of pair programming involves a cultural shift in values of the organization - away from individual and toward team recognition and goals.

From Wooden on Leadership

I rarely assigned one player to a basket. Basketball is a team sport, and I felt it was unwise to allow players to practice by themselves. Always I wanted them to be interacting with their teammates.

From Situated Learning - Legitimate Peripheral Participation

The fact that the work was done in an interaction between members opened it up to other members of the team.

From The Fifth Discipline

The total absence of meaningful practice or rehearsal is probably the predominant factor that keeps most management teams from being effective learning units.

In great teams conflict becomes productive.

From Peopleware

Most organizations don't set out consciously to kill teams. They just act that way.

The structure of a team is a network, not a hierarchy.

From The Deming Route to Quality

Time and again I see the benefits of using a team.

Teamwork characteristics ... cannot be determined if you interview ... one at a time.

From The Mythical Man Month

The Mythical Man Month is only incidentally about software but primarily about how people in teams make things.

From Toyota Production System - Beyond Large Scale

In modern industry, harmony among people in a group, as in teamwork, is in greater demand than the art of the individual craftsman.

From The Starfish and the Spider

The Toyota assembly line... if an employee stopped the line a pleasant "ding-dong" would sound and teams would carefully study what was going on.

learning

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From The Psychology of Computer Programming

In the end though, it's their method of learning that distinguishes teams from groups… team members always have a common goal, regardless of the product - the goal of helping each other learn to perform better.

From The Fifth Discipline

The total absence of meaningful practice or rehearsal is probably the predominant factor that keeps most management teams from being effective learning units.
Learning is eventually always about action.

From The Deming Route To Quality

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at 20 or 80. [Henry Ford]

From Mindset

Speed and difficulty are the enemy of learning.

From Surfing the Edge of Chaos

The defining feature of a complex adaptive system is its ability to learn.

From Agile Development in the Large

Learning and change processes are part of each other. Change is a learning process and learning is a change process.

From The Aesthetics of Change

All simple and complex regulation as well as learning involve feedback. Contexts of learning and change are therefore principally concerned with altering or establishing feedback.

From The Lean Startup

I've come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups.

Qualitative learning is a necessary companion to quantitative testing.

From Managing the Design Factory

In life, we design most processes for repetitive activities because a process is a way of preserving learning that occurs when doing an activity. … We need to find some way to preserve what we have learned without discouraging people from doing new things.

From Situated learning - Legitimate Peripheral Participation

A learning curriculum is thus characteristic of a community.

From Ackoff's Best

Development of individuals and corporations is more a matter of learning than earning.

From Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman

They didn't even know what they "knew". I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding; they learn by some other way - by rote, or something. Their knowledge is so fragile.

From Management of the Absurd

Ex-convicts are better able to rehabilitate prison inmates than is the prison staff. Ex-drug addicts are more successful in getting other addicts off drugs than are psychiatrists. Students learn more from each other than they do from their professors.

From Experiential Learning: Beginning

If there is no provocation, there is no learning.

From What Did You Say?

Learning is what feedback is all about.

From Brain Rules

Students learn better from words and pictures than from words alone.
Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented simultaneously rather than successively.
Students learn better when corresponding words and pictures are presented near to each other rather than far apart on the page or screen.
Students learn better when extraneous material is excluded rather than included.
Students learn better from animation and narration than from animation and on-screen text.
Spaced learning is greatly superior to massed learning.

From Measuring and managing performance in organizations

When outcomes are revealed so slowly, learning is difficult.

systems

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From Smart Swarm

Unlike our systems, which are tuned for efficiency, the termites' systems have been tuned for robustness, which they demonstrate by building mounds that are constantly self-healing.

We should think of it [the termite mound] as a dynamic system that balances forces both inside and outside its walls to create the right environment for the termites.

From The Fifth Discipline

In systems thinking it is an axiom that every influence is both a cause and an effect. Nothing is ever influenced in just one direction.

From The Mind of War

…in order to determine the consistency of any new system we must construct or uncover another system beyond it… One cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself. Moreover, attempts to do so lead to confusion and disorder.

From Becoming a Technical Leader

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

From How To Use Conscious Purpose Without Wrecking Everything

If I design a system with no regard for the universe that surrounds it, I will have scanty knowledge of what can impact it. That is not a formula for success. To fit my system in to the larger system of systems around it, I must go to the next higher level of recursion, which is a frame of reference that encompasses my system and its environment—that is, the systems around it. What is involved is not simply survival of the fittest, but survival of the fitting-in-est, of that which fits in best.

Ignoring feedback merely means that the system will eventually experience a massive unpleasant surprise rather than a small unpleasant surprise.

From Surfing the Edge of Chaos

The defining feature of a complex adaptive system is its ability to learn.

From Managing the Design Factory

Whenever we see an intense need for communications it is typically a sign that the system has been incorrectly partitioned.

From Management 3.0

The Red Queen's Race is an evolutionary hypothesis describing that a complex system needs continuous improvement to simply maintain its current fitness, relative to the systems it is co-evolving with. Some scientists claim that the Red Queen's Race, or the principle of co-evolving species, is an even more important driver of evolution that any other kind of environmental change.

From Adapt - why success always starts with failure

Complexity is a problem only in tightly coupled systems.

From Thinking in Systems - A Primer

The system, to a large extent, causes its own behaviour.

This capacity of a system to make its own structure more complex is called self-organization.

Complex systems can evolve from simple systems only if there are stable intermediate forms.

From The End of Certainty

A nonequilibrium system may evolve spontaneously to a state of increased complexity.

From The Deming Route To Quality

Management works on the system, people work in the system.

From The Gift of Time

Jerry warns us that when a system that continues to change or that is in a changing environment is subjected to a fixed set of tests, it will inevitably over-adapt to those tests, leading to a higher probability of severe or surprising failures in the field. [James Bach]

I have become enormously skeptical of simple cause-and-effect explanations of any system behavior. [Tim Lister]

From Quality Software Management. Vol 4. Anticipating Change

Human systems don't change unless the individuals change, one at a time.

From Ackoff's Best

The essential properties of a system taken as a whole derive from the interactions of its parts, not their actions taken separately. Therefore, when a system is taken apart it loses its essential properties. Because of this - and this is the critical point - a system is a whole that cannot be understood by analysis.

An organisation is a system whose major deficiencies arise from the ways its parts interact, not from their actions taken separately.

From The Lean Startup

That which optimizes one part of the system necessarily undermines the system as a whole.

From Certain to Win

The insidious thing about entropy is that within a closed system, it always increases. In other words, closed systems run down.

From Consilience

In a system containing perfect internal order, such as a crystal, there can be no further change.

From An Introduction to General Systems Thinking

A "boundary" may not be infinitely thin, precisely so it can partake of both system and environment. Rather than separating, such a boundary connects.

From General Principles of Systems Design

The system responds more slowly in order to respond more surely.

From The Systems Bible

Systems don't appreciate being fiddled and diddled with. They will react to protect themselves.

Systems tend to oppose their own proper functions.

From The Road Less Travelled and Beyond

Systems inherently resist change.

From How Buildings Learn: Chapter 2 - Shearing Layers

The dynamics of the system will be dominated by the slow components, with the rapid components simply following along. Slow constrains quick; slow controls quick.

From Dr Deming

Lowering the number of defects in a stable system can only be achieved by working on the system.

Overadjustment of a stable system invariably makes things worse. This deserves a special name - tampering.

practising

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From Not Always So

When we practice together, we forget our own practice… When you practice your own practice together with others, the true ego-lessness happens.

From The Aesthetics of Change

Occidentals ... practice in order to get a skill, which is then a tool - in which I, unchanged, now have a new tool, that's all. The Oriental view is that you practice in order to change yourself.

From The Fifth Discipline

The total absence of meaningful practice or rehearsal is probably the predominant factor that keeps most management teams from being effective learning units.

From Wooden on Leadership

I rarely assigned one player to a basket. Basketball is a team sport, and I felt it was unwise to allow players to practice by themselves. Always I wanted them to be interacting with their teammates.

From The Mind of War

Boyd also came to appreciate the routine practice and repetition that was required to become really good at something and to overcome the boredom by focusing on minute improvements.

From Talent is Overrated

Practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level. You can work on technique all you like, but if you can't see the effects, two things will happen: You won't get any better, and you'll stop caring.

From Stuka Pilot

Another confirmation of the truth of our old Stuka maxim: "Nothing comes off - except what you have practised."

We have long since ceased to develop practice from theory; we do just the opposite.

From Thinking Fast and Slow

An important principle of skills training: rewards for improved performance work better than punishment of mistakes.

The accurate intuition of experts are better explained by the effects of prolonged practice than by heuristics.

From Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Right practice, right attitude, right understanding.

From Bounce

Nobody who had reached the elite group without copious practice, and nobody who had worked their socks off but failed to excel.

From Mindset

Babe Ruth loved to practice. In fact when he joined the Boston Red Sox… he wasn't just a rookie. He was a rookie pitcher.

From Zen in the Art of Archery

If I tried to give you a clue at the cost of your own experience, I should be the worst of teachers and deserve to be sacked! So let's stop talking about it and go on practising.

From Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

Human beings always cling to things. Practice begins when you stop clinging.

From Thinking Fast and Slow

It is the mark of effortful activities that they interfere with each other.

From Mozart a biography

From earliest childhood he practiced for thousands of hours every year.

patterns of connection

When I read a good book I highlight passages that catch my attention. I copy a few of the highlights into a book-snippet.

This photo is of page 75 of my battered copy of The Secrets of Consulting. The yellow highlights are from the first time I read the book, the pink ones from the second time, the blue ones the fourth time. At the bottom right is one sentence outlined in pen and marked with an eight. That tells me I marked that sentence on my eighth re-read. (I've run out of new colours.)

I find it better to re-read a really good book 10 times rather than read 10 average books once each. It's the really good books that provide new insights each time I re-read them. Marking highlights in this way allows me to go back in time. What topics caught my attention in early readings? What topics in later readings? I can explore the differences. Of course, part of that newness is that I'm a different person each time I re-read. I'm older. A sentence triggers a new thought based an experience I've had since my last read. Also, I remember more of the book each time. For example I can see on my seventh re-read I marked this

The toughest problems don't come in neatly labeled packages. Or they come in packages with the wrong labels.

and I underlined the words labeled and labels because I'd consciously connected them to The Label Law (on page 64).

The name of the thing is not the thing.

Underneath that I can see I've written "The Dread Pirate Roberts". That's a connection to a scene from one of my favourite films, The Princess Bride. Westley is in the fire swamp explaining to Princess Buttercup how he has become the Dread Pirate Roberts...

Westley: I, as you know, am Roberts.

Buttercup: But how is that possible, since he's been marauding twenty years and you only left me five years ago?

Westley: I myself am often surprised at life's little quirks...

Westley: Well, Roberts had grown so rich, he wanted to retire. So he took me to his cabin and told me his secret. "I am not the Dread Pirate Roberts," he said. "My name is Ryan. I inherited the ship from the previous Dread Pirate Roberts, just as you will inherit it from me. The man I inherited it from was not the real Dread Pirate Roberts, either. His name was Cummerbund. The real Roberts has been retired fifteen years and living like a king in Patagonia." Then he explained the name was the important thing for inspiring the necessary fear. You see, no one would surrender to the Dread Pirate Westely.

John Gall (who was born in 1925), recently gave a fabulous talk called how to use conscious purpose without wrecking everything. He said:

As the years go by, the brain begins to put the dots together, to make conscious links between one experience and another, between one historical fact and another. A person begins to experience one’s entire life history as an integrated narrative.

This integrating capacity of the human brain is perhaps its most marvelous achievement. And you have to be old—usually fifty or sixty years old—to reach that point where it dawns on your conscious mind that that’s what’s going on. Unless you are already in your coffin, your mind is always a work in progress, an ongoing process of continual growth and greater differentiation, richer and more far-reaching correlations.

He chatted about how much his mind had changed during the first 40 years of his life compared to the most recent 40 years of his life. He said the latter change was far greater.
Isn't that amazing. Fantastic.
I'm looking forward to getting older!
I'm looking forward to seeing more and more patterns of connection.

courage

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From The Importance of Living

The courage to be one's own natural self is quite a rare thing.

From eXtreme Programming explained

Communication supports courage because it opens the possibility for more high-risk, high-reward experiments...

Simplicity supports courage because you can afford to be much more courageous with a simple system.

Concrete feedback supports courage because you feel much safer trying radical surgery on the code if you can push a button and see tests turn green at the end (or not, in which case you can throw the code away).

From The Road Less Travelled and Beyond

One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how relatively few people understand what courage is. The absence of fear is not courage; the absence of fear is some kind of brain damage. Courage is the capacity to go ahead in spite of fear, or in spite of pain.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 4. Anticipating Change

Ultimately what helps you most in managing system size is courage and realism.

From The Tao of Pooh

From caring comes courage.

From The Alchemist

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

From We Seven

Looking back on it now, it sounds a bit silly. But it takes little moments like that to build up a person's tolerance of fear and his ability to face the unknown. [Malcomn Scott Carpenter]

From The Teachings of Don Juan

There is nothing wrong with being afraid. When you fear, you see things in a different way.

Fear is the first natural enemy a man must overcome on his path to knowledge.

From The Conquest of Happiness

Every kind of fear grows worse by not being looked at.

From Mastery

The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your own hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency.

From Stuka Pilot

Little by little I discover all the tricks. Skill is often the result of getting hurt.

From Existentialism and humanism

What produces cowardice is the act of giving up.

From Zen Bow, Zen Arrow

Gratitude will make you brave.

communicating

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From The Systems Bible

The meaning of a communication is the behaviour that results.

Information theory is a mathematical treatment of what is left after the meanings have been removed from a Communication.

From Managing the Design Factory

Whenever we see an intense need for communications it is typically a sign that the system has been incorrectly partitioned.

From The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believe it to be true, indicating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers.

From Management of the Absurd

It is only when the balance of power is relatively equal that truly candid communication can and should take place.

From eXtreme Programming explained

XP is a communal software development discipline.

From The Road Less Travelled and Beyond

Community has to do with communication.

From Situated learning - Legitimate peripheral participation

A learning curriculum is thus characteristic of a community.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 1. Systems Thinking

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

From The Mind of War

Oral, not written, communication and conviction, not accuracy, still rule in military culture.

The tendency is for entropy to increase in a system that is closed or cannot communicate with the external systems or environments.

From The Starfish and the Spider

I taught them that communication is to be upward if it is to work at all.

From An Ecology of Mind

Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all. This is true of all communication.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 2. First-Order Measurement

Large projects always fail when their communication systems fail.

From The Psychology of Computer Programming

The greatest challenge, then, is not creative thinking, but creative communicating: representing our thoughts in a way that other persons - each with a unique style - can understand.

From how to use conscious purpose without wrecking everything

Once you get above that first level, the level of material things and forces, you are dealing with abstractions. In place of physical forces, you have communication—messages, signals. And in place of material things, you have relationships—which are abstractions.

From Wisdom of the idiots

Words alone do not communicate: there must be something prepared, of which the words are a hint.

feedback

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From The Secrets of Consulting

People can take any amount of water from any stream to use for any purpose desired. People must return an equal amount of water upstream from the point from which they took it.

From The Psychology of Computer Programming

It is a well-known psychological principle that in order to maximize the rate of learning, the subject must be fed back information on how well or poorly he is doing.

From An Ecology of Mind

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance.

From Leverage Points

Missing feedback is one of the most common causes of system malfunction.

From How to Use Conscious Purpose Without Wrecking Everything

Ignoring feedback merely means that the system will eventually experience a massive unpleasant surprise rather than a small unpleasant surprise.

The amount of feedback that is built into living organisms differs by many orders of magnitude from the amount that we build into manmade systems.

Flexibility means the willingness to act in response to the feedback message by actually changing how the system works.

From The Principles of Product Development Flow

The speed of feedback is at least two orders of magnitude more important to product developers than manufacturers...

The human effect of fast feedback loops are regenerative. Fast feedback gives people a sense of control; they use it, see results, and this further reinforces their sense of control.

Fast local feedback loops prevent the accumulation of variance.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 1. Systems Thinking

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

From Quality Software Management. Vol 2. First-Order Measurement

Software development is not primarily a manufacturing operation for we (ideally) never develop the same software twice. This uniqueness of product means that Deming's "statistical signal" - though necessary - is not sufficient for feedback control, because there often isn't enough repetition - enough stability - to generate meaningful statistics.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 3. Congruent Action

Information about past behaviour, delivered in the present, which may or may not influence future behaviour.

From Quality Software Management. Vol 4. Anticipating Change

In a feedback control system it's only our perception that determines which is controller and which is controllee.

From What Did You Say?

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.

We structure our world so we will not receive feedback that threatens our view.

We don't even wait to ignore feedback, but actively take steps to prevent such feedback from ever happening in the first place.

Don't concentrate on giving feedback; concentrate on being congruent - responding to the other person, to yourself, and to the here-and-now situation...

From Management 3.0

Feedback is only feedback when there is a purpose behind it.

From Talent is Overrated

Practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level. You can work on technique all you like, but if you can't see the effects, two things will happen: You won't get any better, and you'll stop caring.

Feedback? At most companies this is a travesty, consisting of an annual performance review dreaded by the person delivering it and the one receiving it. Even if it's well done, it cannot be effective. Telling someone what he did well or poorly on a task he completed eleven months ago is just not helpful.

From Agile Development in the Large

Quick feedback should be the first thing you introduce.

From The Dance of Life

All societies depend for the stability on feedback from the people. Depersonalization reduces feedback to a minimum, contributing to instability and lowering the overall level of congruence in the society.

From Understanding the Professional Programmer

Many programmers… work in environments in which they receive essentially no real feedback embodying the consequences of what they do. Lacking no real feedback, they lack the motivation to attempt changes, and they also lack the information needed to make the correct changes.

From The Systems Bible

Just calling it "feedback" doesn't mean that it has actually fed back. To speak precisely: It hasn't fed back until the system changes course. Up until that point it's merely sensory input.

From The Aesthetics of Change

All simple and complex regulation as well as learning involve feedback. Contexts of learning and change are therefore principally concerned with altering or establishing feedback.

From Surfing the Edge of Chaos

Feedback is the means by which a system talks to itself.

From The Fifth Discipline

Virtually all feedback processes have some form of delay.

you need to tell this to our managers

I did a very enjoyable live coding presentation using cyber-dojo at XP Days Ukraine last week. At the start I asked the XP question and, as usual, the audience told me lots about the XP practices (such as pair-programming) but struggled to name the four XP values, and failed to name courage.

On more than one occasion, while consulting or training at a customer's site trying to help explain and convey "an agile mindset", I've been told

you need to tell this to our managers

If I did tell their managers I'm pretty sure I know what would happen.
Can you guess?
Scroll down for my answer.
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I think their managers would say

you need to tell this to our managers

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testing a random die roll

What tests would I write? Maybe I'd start by testing it only rolls 1 to 6

def test_doesnt_roll_less_than_1_or_greater_than_6
  1200.times do
    die = roll_die
    assert 1 <= die && die <= 6
  end
end

That's a good start. But it's not nearly enough. One way to think about testing is to imagine someone is deliberately writing the code so that it passes the tests but is nevertheless completely incorrect. Take, for example, sorting an array of N integers. What tests would you write? Now suppose I tell you the incorrect implementation simply returns an array of N 42's. Are you testing the output array is a permutation of the input array?

Back to rolling the die... an implementation of roll_die() which always returned 3 would pass my first test. I need to test all of 1-6 get returned.

def test_rolls_1_to_6_at_least_once_each_in_600_rolls
  rolls = [-1,0,0,0,0,0,0]
  600.times do
    die = roll_die
    rolls[die] += 1
  end
  assert rolls[1] >= 1
  assert rolls[2] >= 1
  assert rolls[3] >= 1
  assert rolls[4] >= 1
  assert rolls[5] >= 1
  assert rolls[6] >= 1
end

Why 600 rolls? You might be thinking it's too large. That a decent roll_die() should return at least one each of 1-6 after a lot fewer than 600 rolls. Or, to put it another way, if I have to wait till the 600th roll to get my first 5 then roll_die() is looking a bit suspect. Fair enough.

The tests form a specification. If I want to specify a "tighter" implementation of roll_die() I can simply change 600 to, 200 say. The 200 is then part of the specification.

Once again, it's easy to imagine an incorrect implementation that passes all the tests. How about one that simply cycles repeatedly through 1-6...

$n = 1

def roll_die
  $n += 1
  $n %= 6
  $n + 1
end

I've tested the "die" part of "random die". I've got to the "random" part of "random die". My incorrect implementation is not very random. It's very regular. It's very ordered. Suppose I call roll_die() 1200 times, save the 1200 values in a file, and then compress the file. I should get a lot of compression. Let's try it…

dice = ""
1200.times { dice += roll_die.to_s }
File.open('dice.txt', 'w') { |f| f.write(dice) }
unzipped_size = File.size('dice.txt')
assert_equal 1200, unzipped_size
`zip dice.txt.zip dice.txt`
zipped_size = File.size('dice.txt.zip')
p zipped_size

On my macbook I get a value of 184. As expected, a lot of compression. Let's compare the compression to an implementation that isn't deliberately incorrect.

def roll_die
  [1,2,3,4,5,6].shuffle[0]
end

This gives a zipped file size of around 680. A lot less compression. I can use that as part of the specification.

def test_roll_is_random_entropically
  dice = ""
  1200.times { dice += roll_die().to_s }
  File.open('dice.txt', 'w') { |f| f.write(dice) }
  unzipped_size = File.size('dice.txt')
  assert_equal 1200, unzipped_size
  `zip dice.txt.zip dice.txt`
  zipped_size = File.size('dice.txt.zip')
  assert zipped_size > 600
end

Imagine someone is deliberately writing the code so that it passes the tests but is nevertheless completely incorrect…

the power of example

Last week I attended another excellent Jerry Weinberg course in Albuquerque. Here's one of the nuggets I learned. It's related to the famous Solomon Asch social psychology conformity experiment.

In the experiment a group of people are shown two cards. The first card has a single line on it. The second card has three lines on it labelled A,B,C one of which clearly matches the length of the line on the other card (and the other two clearly don't). Only one person in the group is the actual subject and is unaware that the other members of the group are part of the experiment. The experiment measures how likely the subject is to conform to the answer given by everyone else when that answer is clearly the wrong one. The answer is "quite a lot". But that's not what I learned. What I learned about is a variation on that experiment. One where Solomon Asch measured how the effect varied depending on how many other people's answers matched, or didn't match, the subject's answer. You can read about this variation (and some others) here. This is the punchline:

The presence of a [single] supporting partner depleted the majority of much of its power. Its pressure on the dissenting individual was reduced to one fourth: that is, subjects answered incorrectly only one fourth as often as under the pressure of a unanimous majority.

Isn't that a great example of the power of setting an example. Of how change happens one person at a time. Of courage. Of how important it is that people feel safe. People are always more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

the tao is silent

is an excellent book by Raymond Smullyan (isbn 0-06-067-469-5). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The Taoist strikes me as one who is not so much in search of something he hasn't, but who is enjoying what he has.

Just what is the Tao; how should one define the Tao? Perhaps one of my favourite definitons is: "the reason things are as they are."

"Don't look for the meaning; look for the use" [Ludwig Wittgenstein]

Is it completely out of the question that there may be objects in the universe which are so sensitive that the very act of naming them throws them out of existence?

It is unnameable because it changes in the very process of naming it.

The situation is perfectly analogous to a man who does not trust his dog and keeps him perpetually chained. The chaining process obviously makes the dog vicious, and the man then says, "You see why such a vicious dog has to be chained!"

You are trying to force that which can thrive only if it is not forced.

Kindness cannot be taught by harshness - not by any amount of harshness.

Freedom is doing what one likes: Zen is liking what one does.

The problem of hiring astrology professors is relatively easy. To hire an astrologer professor, all one has to do is to cast his horoscope and see if he would make a good astrology professor.

My immediate reaction to the remark "one should not be too tolerant" was to be intolerant of it.

Taiichi Ohno's workplace management

is an excellent book by Taiichi Ohno (isbn 978-0-07-180801-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

When I was a middle school student in the old system, we studied the Chinese classics, and during this class we learned from the Analects of Confucius. In these writings Confucious says, "The wise will mend their ways" and "The wise man should not hesitate to correct themselves."... Confucius was saying that we should change gracefully... I think his words mean that in the end it is not good if you hold onto your ideas too strongly and try stubbornly to justify them.

When we said we would set up a centralized grinding operation, one experienced worker said, "No, we tried that during the war, but it failed. That's why we do it the way we do now." [I said] "I did not see it fail during the war. Show me again how it fails. If I am persuaded by this, I will let you continue doing it the way you do it now."

If you asked me, "What is the most important part of production control?" I would say it is to limit overproduction.

The kanban was a slip that indicated how many pieces they were coming to get, so that if they were going to take ten parts this became a production instruction slip directing the production line to make ten pieces.

When lot sizes are small, you need to do changeovers more frequently.

Stopping the line causes a great loss, so this forces us to think, "How do we keep them from stopping the line?" and this results in more and more quality kaizen.

You can only really tell what is better based on results.

Accounting cannot do any cost reduction... The shop floor reduces inventory. This money goes to the bank... Instead, accounting thinks it just needs to allocate cost savings targets.

There is something called standard work, but standards should be changing constantly. Instead, if you think of the standard as the best you can do, it's all over. The standard is only a baseline for doing further kaizen. It is kaiaku if things get worse than now, and it is kaizen if things get better than now. Standards are set arbitrarily by humans so how can they not change?

You must create a standard for comparison.

Drop a nut once and pick it up. Working at the average time is like trying to catch the nut halfway because letting it drop all the way down takes too long... There is no such thing as average value in this world.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the old masters, seek instead what these masters sought. [Matsu Basho 1644-1694]

Once he asked me how the terms kaizen and kairyo (reform) were differentiated in the West. I said that while kaizen means to make improvements by using brains, kairyo means to make improvements by using money, and that in the West, most managers only think of improvement in terms of money. [Massaki Imai]

Let the flow manage the processes, and not let management manage the flow.

The aim of kanban is to make troubles come to the surface and link them to kaizen activity. I tell people, "Let idle people play rather than do unnecessary work."

The production line that never stops is either excellent or terrible.

Costs exist to be reduced, not to be calculated.

lessons from geese

Here are some facts about Geese, borrowed from Dr Robert McNeish. They appeared in an issue of Southwest Airlines corporate newsletter.

When you see geese heading back north for the summer flying along in a "V" formation you might be interested in knowing what scientists have discovered about why they fly that way. It has been learned that as each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird immediately following. By flying in "V" formation, the whole flock adds a least 71 percent greater flying range than if each bird flew on its own.

Whenever a goose falls out of formation it suddenly feels the drag and resistance of trying to go it alone and quickly gets back into formation to take advantage of the lifting power of the bird immediately in front.

When the leads goose gets tired, he rotates back in the wing and another goose flies point.

The geese honk from behind to encourage those up front to keep up their speed.

When a goose gets sick or is wounded by gunshot and falls out, two geese fall out of formation and follow him down to help and protect him. They stay with him until he is able to fly or until he is dead, and then they launch out on their own or fly with another formation to catch up with their group.

the pleasure of finding things out

is an excellent book by Richard Feynman (isbn 978-0-141-03143-9). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Looking at the bird he says, "Do you know what that bird is? It's a brown throated thrush; but in Portuguese it's a … in Italian a …, " he says "in Chinese it's a …, in Japanese a …," etcetera. "Now," he says, "you know in all the languages you want to know what the name of the bird is and when you've finished with all that," he says, "you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. You only know about humans in different places and what they call the bird. Now," he says, "let's look at the bird."

I said, "Say, Pop, I noticed something: When I pull the wagon the ball rolls to the back of the wagon, and when I'm pulling it along and I suddenly stop, the ball rolls to the front of the wagon," and I says, "why is that?" And he said, "That nobody knows," he said. "The general principe is that things that are moving try to keep on moving and things that are standing still tend to stand still unless you push on them hard." And he says, "This tendency is called inertia but nobody knows why it's true." Now that's a deep understanding - he doesn't give me a name, he knew the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something, which I learnt very early.

To do high, real good physics work you do need absolutely solid lengths of time.

You cannot expected old designs to work in new circumstances.

If you are in a hurry, you must dissipate heat.

We had lots of fun.

The people underneath didn't know at all what they were doing. And the Army wanted to keep it that way; there was no information going back and forth... I felt that you couldn't make the plant safe unless you knew how it worked… I said that the first thing there has to be is that the technical guys know what we're doing. Oppenheimer went and talked to the security people and got special permission. So I had a nice lecture in which I told them what we were doing, and they were all excited. We're fighting a war. We see what it is. They knew what the numbers meant. If the pressure came out higher, that meant there was more energy released and so on and so on. They knew what they were doing. Complete transformation! They began to invent ways of doing it better. They supervised the scheme. They worked all night. They didn't need supervising at night. They didn't need anything. They understood everything. They invented several of the programs that we used and so forth. So my boys really came through and all that had to be done was to tell them what it was, that's all. It's just, don't tell them they're punching holes. As a result, although it took them nine months to do three problems before, we did nine problems in three months.

Most of the trouble was the big shots coming all the time and saying you're going to break something, going to break something.

We used to go for walks often to get rest.

Advertising, for example, is an example of a scientifically immoral description of the products.

The magnetic properties on a very small scale are not the same as on a large scale.

But what we ought to be able to do seems gigantic compared with our confused accomplishments. Why is this? Why can't we conquer ourselves?

Erosion and blow-by are not what the design expected. They are warnings that something is wrong. The equipment is not operating as expected, and therefore there is a danger that it can operate with even wider deviations in this unexpected and not thoroughly understood way… The O-rings of the Solid Booster Rockets were not designed to erode. Erosion was a clue that something was wrong. Erosion was not something from which safety can be inferred.

We have also found that certification criteria used in Flight Readiness Reviews often develop a gradually decreasing strictness.

The computer software checking system and attitude is of highest quality. There appears to be no process of gradually fooling oneself while degrading standards so characteristic of the Solid Rocket Booster or Space Shuttle Main Engine safety systems. To be sure, there have been recent suggestions by management to curtail such elaborate and expensive tests as being unnecessary at this late date in Shuttle history. This must be resisted for it does not appreciate the mutual subtle influences, and sources of error generated by even small changes of one part of a program on another. There are perpetual requests for changes as new payloads and new demands and modifications are suggested by the users. Changes are expensive because they require extensive testing. The proper way to save money is to curtail the number of requested changes, not the quality of testing for each.

Official management, on the other hand, claims to believe the probability of failure is a thousand times less. One reason for this may be an attempt to assure the government of NASA perfection and success in order to ensure the supply of funds. The other may be that they sincerely believe it to be true, indicating an almost incredible lack of communication between themselves and their working engineers.

It is presumptuous if one says, "We're going to find the ultimate particle, or the unified field laws," or "the" anything.

driving in India

Patterns of Software by Richard Gabriel is one of my favourite books. On page 60 he quotes Christopher Alexander (who is talking about D'Arcy Thompson)

What Thompson insisted on was that every form is basically the end result of a certain growth process. ... Thompson was saying that everything is the way it is today because it is the result of a certain history - which of course includes how it got made. At the time I read this I did not really understand it very well; whereas I now realize that he is completely right.

I'll use an example to try and illustrate this idea of, as Jerry Weinberg puts it, things being the way they are because they got that way. The example is driving in India.

The most obvious thing that strikes me when I visit Bangalore or Chennai is the almost constant horn tooting. Is tooting your horn a formally taught behaviour, or is it learned behaviour I wondered. I asked some friends who live in India. They said it is not something you're taught. It is learned behaviour. I find this fascinating. It could mean that at some point in past tooting was common, but not endemic, and that for some reason or reasons it reached a tipping point and became endemic. What are those reasons? Why did they prevail? Do those reasons apply to all Indian cities or are some quieter than others? Do the reasons shed any light on whether endemic horn tooting will or won't ever go away?

A pattern I started to sense during my most recent trip is when a slow vehicle is stuck behind an even slower vehicle (a bus for example) and toots the horn as if to say "move over". The bus slowly moves over, the first vehicle passes it, and as it goes by toots twice, the first toot to say "thank" and the second toot to say "you". I never got the sense the tooting was overtly aggressive. I think drivers are tooting mostly to tell other drivers where they are. Considering the apparent chaos everyone is remarkably relaxed! The tooting has become part of a system of communication.

Naturally, once certain behaviours get a foothold, other behaviours adapt to them, helping to reinforce the co-evolving system. Drivers of slow vehicles start to rely on other drivers tooting them if they want to pass. They politely ask people to toot them by painting "Blow horn" signs on the backs and sides of their trucks. Artistic individuals spot an opportunity and, for a small fee, offer to paint ever more elaborate "Horn please" signs. Before you know it Volkswagen pre-fits cars it sells in India with slightly louder electromechanical horns. Now some truck drivers don't move over unless they're tooted and you have to toot if you want to pass. Viola. A co-evolving, intertwingled, history. Things are the way they are because they've got that way.

Large potholes in the road are common. Roads in India don't really have left lanes and right lanes so much as worse lanes and better lanes. I certainly don't recall seeing any white-line lane-dividers. What looks like total lane switching "indiscipline" is again simply sensible adaptive driving.

If traffic moved very fast the frequent lane switching would be downright dangerous. But traffic doesn't move fast. One reason is simply that lots of the traffic is old. Driving a new car in a sea of old cars could be quite dangerous (because of the brakes). Perhaps that's partly why the roads are regularly punctuated with pretty severe speed-bumps (actual ones as well as the pot holes). The speed-bumps keep your speed low even if you have a new car. So why buy a more expensive new car? Things are the way they are because they've got that way.

The traffic is also very varied. There are trucks, buses, masses of 3 wheeler took-tooks, huge numbers of motorbikes, push-bikes, push-trikes, pedestrians, carts, cows, you name it. As the traffic constantly switches lanes spaces of varying sizes constantly appear. No matter what the size of the space, there is always some form of road user just the right size to fill it. The variety encourages lane switching and the lane switching encourages variety. It gets that way.

Another reason traffic crawls is sheer numbers. More than a billion people Iive in India. There's a lot of traffic because there's a lot of people. And a lot of those people are young people. According to Wikipedia more than 50% of the Indian population is below the age of 25! The average middle-class home in a city such as Chennai is about 20 times the average middle class salary. Combine that with 10%+ interest rates and it's easy to see that a lot of people cannot afford to live in the city where they work. With so many young people, a hot climate, and a urban army of forced commuters it's no wonder there are so many motorbikes and buses, and increasingly, small cars. Things are the way they are because they got that way.

And a system that has got a certain way will, all things being equal, want to stay that way. A system will resist change. That's virtually a definition of a system. Only by resisting does it sit still long enough to be recognisable as something at all!

we seven

is an excellent book by the seven mercury astronauts (isbn 978--4391-8103-4). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

By working with the designers and engineers on a brand-new, complicated airplane you learn to ferret out the bugs and problems before they can be built into the system to worry other pilots who will use later production aircraft. [John Glenn]

Looking back on it now, it sounds a bit silly. But it takes little moments like that to build up a person's tolerance of fear and his ability to face the unknown. [Malcomn Scott Carpenter]

When I got back to the States, I served a hitch teaching some younger pilots how to fly. This kind of duty is probably even more dangerous than combat. At least you know what a MIG is going to do. [Virgil Grissom]

A test-pilot is fiercely proud of his profession. [Walter Schirra]

I could not take care of the polyp right away because part of the procedure before they could operate on it was to keep me absolutely quiet for four days and not let me speak… Later on the medics did put me on a week's silent treatment. I had to break it only once when a NASA official called me up from Langley to ask me how my polyp was coming along. I told him he had just interrupted the cure. [Walter Schirra]

In combat, for example, you are thinking about what goes on outside of your airplane… But in test flying you have an entirely different problem. You are concerned about what is going on inside the airplane, and what the aircraft itself is doing. [Deke Slayton]

If you are an amateur in this business, and you just think you are in trouble, you can really get yourself into trouble very fast by doing the wrong thing first. You might be a whole lot better off if you did nothing at all. [Deke Slayton]

In flying, navigation is generally defined as "continuously detecting and correcting infinitesimal errors in the flight path." [Deke Slayton]

The schedule was flexible. We knew that variable factors such as weather, over which we would have no control, could cause delays. [John Glenn]

This panel groups all of the warning lights in one convenient place so we can see at a glance if any problems have cropped up. [John Glenn]

Each part that goes into the capsule has had a prototype tested to destruction to make sure it can stand the rough ride and the temperature changes. The test procedures are extremely painstaking. First, one part is tested; then two parts are linked together and both of them are tested as a unit. The small units are joined into bigger units for further testing, and this process continues until finally the entire machine is ready for a master test. [Malcomn Scott Carpenter]

We adopted three basic principles. First, we would use any training device or method that had even a remote chance of being useful. Second, we would make the training as difficult as possible so that we would be overtrained, if anything, rather then undertrained. And third, except for some wise scheduling of time, we decided to conduct our training on an informal basis. Everyone assumed from the start that we were mature, well-motivated individuals. Everyone knew we were all eager to make good. [Deke Slayton]

The manual went out of date as fast as the capsule grew… In the meantime… we had to work with some early drawings of the spacecraft that had been included in the original specifications. This was a bit like learning how to cook from looking into some chef's garbage pail. [Deke Slayton]

We did not blame any of our problems on such things as gremlins. For one thing, these creatures belonged to another era. [John Glenn]

We also had daily scheduling meetings to keep everyone informed of our progress and up to date on any problems which cropped up. Here is where we reviewed the work being done on the various systems. [Virgil Grissom]

Even though the electronic machines were clever, we did not let them run the show. [Alan Shepard]

an ecology of mind

is an excellent dvd, by Nora Bateson, about her father, Gregory Bateson, who wrote An Ecology of Mind. As usual here's are some selected quotes:

Without context, words and actions have no meaning at all. This is true of all communication... [Gregory Bateson]

A role is a half-arsed relationship. It's one end of a relationship. You cannot study only one end of a relationship and make any sense. What you will make is disaster. [Gregory Bateson]

I've been bothered a little bit the past few days by people who say, "What do you mean 'ecology of mind'". And approximately what I mean is that the various sorts of 'stuff' that goes on in ones heads and in ones behaviour, and dealing with other people and walking up and down mountains, and getting sick and getting well and all that. That all that stuff interlocks, and in fact constitutes a network, and you've got the sort of complicated, living, partly struggling, partly co-operating, tangle, that you find on the side of any of these mountains with the trees and various plant and animals that live there. In fact an ecology. [Gregory Bateson]

The division of things into parts tends to be a device of convenience, and that's all. [Gregory Bateson]

Wise men see outlines and therefore they draw them. [William Blake]
Madmen see outlines and therefore they draw them. [William Blake]
If a fool should persist in his folly, he would become wise [William Blake]

The difference that makes a difference is a way in which to define something in terms of its relationships, using contrast and context, instead of isolating it with a name. [Nora Bateson]

Krishnamurti said something like "You might think you're thinking your own thoughts. You're not. You're thinking your culture's thoughts." [Nora Bateson]

I guess I've been reading too much Alice. [Gregory Bateson]

The double-bind is a creative imperative. Its the moment when, because this doesn't work and that doesn't work, something else is going to have to be improvised. A creative impulse is necessary at that moment, to get out of the situation, to take it up a level. [Nora Bateson]

The combination of theme with variation immediately points you to something behind it. A formative principle. [Terrence Deacon]

He was often accused of talking in riddles and never coming to the point. The question he posed "What is the pattern that connects?" was never meant to be answered, because the patterns are changing. It was the act of questioning that he was pushing for. Knowing that the eyes behind that curiosity will be the most apt to give the patterns of connection room to wiggle as they perpetually self correct. And to see the beauty in that process. [Nora Bateson]

When you see process you see constant change. That's why Gregory was constantly quoting Heraclitus "no man can step into the same river twice". Because it's flowing. [Mary Bateson]

Only by the creation of change can I perceive something. [Gregory Bateson]

A man walking is never in balance, but always correcting for imbalance. [Gregory Bateson]

He asked the question "What is there about our way of perceiving that makes us not see the delicate interdependencies in an ecological system, that give it its integrity." We don't see them, and therefore we break them. [Mary Bateson]

Any kind of aesthetic response is a response to relationships. [Mary Bateson]

I hope it may have done something to set you free from thinking in material and logical terms, when you are, in fact, trying to think about living things. [Gregory Bateson]

Larry and Jen do Roman Numerals in C++

You may remember Larry and Jen from the popular (900,000+ hits) Deep C (and C++) slide-deck. Well, they're back - this time practising their C++ by doing the Roman Numerals problem.

Larry and Jen do Roman Numerals in C++ from Jon Jagger

Here it is in pdf too.

agile development in the large

is an excellent book by Jutta Eckstein (isbn 978-0932633576). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Quick feedback should be the first thing you introduce.

It is important that instead of the process being adopted it is adapted.

Starting with really short cycles seems to help implement the change to an agile process. If the cycles are short it is very difficult for the whole team to fall back into its old habits.

Learning and change processes are part of each other. Change is a learning process and learning is a change process.

Every agile process contains the following subtle steps
(1) reflection (awareness)
(2) learning
(3) change.

A plan is nothing; planning is everything. [Eisenhower]

If a project is on time and in budget it doesn't mean it was a successful project, but a successful estimate.

Methodologies do not produce skilled developers.

Stability is more negative than it is thought to be. [To stabilize something is to kill it]

A book is always a prevented dialogue.

more secrets of consulting

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg (isbn 978-0932633521). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Consultants are hired for knowing what others don't know, so a consultant who stops learning soon decays in value.

It's always better to be a do-something rather than a know-everything.

The Wishing Wand reminds me of the ability to ask for what I want, and if necessary, to live with not getting it.

Modern psychology often scorns introspection and has become the study of other people's behaviour.

I personally think that big changes result from an accumulation of small changes.

Incongruence is stereotyped behaviour.

It takes big balance to learn small balance.

Nothing is immutably programmined into my mind - except its programmability. The ability of my mind to program itself is a far greater ability than any particular program.

Fear is one of the brakes on creativity.

In social engineering, as in all engineering, failures teach more than successes.