Have you got any strawberries?

I was driving along the A303 towards Gatwick last week and passed several stalls selling strawberries. It reminded me of an incident many years ago, before the kids were born, on the same road when Natalie and I stopped to buy some. We approached the stall. The only thing it sold was strawberries. It was a strawberry stall. Everywhere you looked here were open punnets of strawberries. With a twinkle in my eye I looked at the two young lads manning the stall and watched their puzzled faces as I asked "Have you got any strawberries?"

The World's Least Favourite Airline?

I had a great family cruise on NCL's Norwegian Gem visiting Venice, Dubrovnik, Izmir, Athens, and Nafplion. I particularly liked Dubrovnik and the ruins at Ephesus are truly spectacular and were well worth the long taxi ride from Izmir. NCL was faultless in all respects and I have no hesitation wholeheartedly recommending NCL, it's cruises and its staff.

But not British Airways…the BA flight home from Venice to Gatwick was a joke. There were numerous check in desks at the airport and the only one with a sizeable queue was BA's. In fact the BA queue was so long it blocked one side of the building from the other. I looked (and asked) for some self-service check-in desks and found quite a few from many airline companies but none from BA. The day's first flight from Venice to Gatwick was so late we got to see the end of that fiasco too. It was over-booked and several people queued for two and half hours in sweltering heat only to fail to get a boarding pass. These people naturally joined the queue for the next flight so that flight was overbooked too. But did anyone walk along the queue offering cash to anyone willing to take a later flight? No. So once again some people at the end of the queue were going to fail to get a ticket after queuing for several hours. While the first flight's queue was queueing security had to be called because everything was so badly organised. As usual one of the check-in desks was reserved for Club-something-or-other and so sat mostly idle while the queue lengthened and people grew more and more irate.

We were on the second BA flight out. Having seen the problems from earlier in the day we joined the queue very early. It was a wise move as the queueing was just as badly organised. Eventually we got to the check-in desk and just after we had got our boarding passes I happened to see a not-so-easy-to-see note offering €250 if you took a flight the next day. And just after we had got our boarding passes the check-in lady told us the flight was delayed for an hour - which of course meant it would be delayed for more than one hour - why do they always underestimate the delay? If we had been told the flight had been delayed before we started checking in we might well have taken the offer. We certainly would have given it some serious consideration. And why if they know it's an hour late don't they show that information on the departure boards?

It would have been so easy for BA to do the little things that showed they cared about their customers. Something as simple as providing some kind of cool drink for people while they queued in the heat. It wouldn't be much, but it would be something and it would change the situation so completely. But no.

Over and over you felt BA simply didn't care about you.

I fly quite a lot and from now on if I have a choice - and on several routes I do - I'm not going to fly BA.

The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie

is an excellent book (isbn 0-451-53038-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

In an incautious moment my parents had promised that I should never be sent to school until I asked leave to go. This promise I afterward learned began to give them considerable uneasiness because as I grew up I showed no disposition to ask.

He is a bold man who calls anything a trifle.

The fundamental advantage of a library is that it gives you nothing for nothing. Youths must acquire knowledge themselves.

The celebrated maxim of Confucius: To perform the duties of this life well, troubling not about another, is prime wisdom.

Whenever one learns to do anything he has never to wait long for an opportunity of putting his knowledge to use.

How reserved the Scot is! Where he feels most he expresses least. Silence is more eloquent than words.

Slight attention or a kind word to the humble often bring back reward as great as it is unlooked for. No kind action is ever lost.

Even in these days of the fiercest competition, when everything would seem to be matter of price, there lies still at the root of great business success the very much more important factor of quality.

No sound judgement can remain with the man whose mind is disturbed by the mercurial changes of the Stock Exchange. It places him under an influence akin to intoxication. What is not, he sees, and what he sees, is not.

Mr Pullman replied: "Yes, my friends, all that you say is true. I have had a long, long life full of troubles, but there is one curious fact about them - nine tenths of them never happened."

Trondheim XP Agile cyber-dojo

Anders Hammervold and Jonas Follesø organized a cyber-dojo for the Trondheim XP Agile group yesterday. Anders tells me great fun was had by all.

Managing the design factory

is an excellent book by Don Reinertsen (isbn 0-684-83991-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Best practices are only "best" in certain contexts and to achieve certain objectives. A change in either the context or the objective can quickly transform a "best practice" into a stupid approach.

We must constantly remember that the simplification [of the abstraction] is a veil between us and the reality of the process.

Manufacturing is an inherently repetitive process and therefore more likely to produce learning than a non-repetitive process, like product development.

In the design process we can only add value when we do something differently. If we change nothing, then we add no value.

We will see much more variability in the design process than we see in repetitive manufacturing process. This variability is an indicator that we are doing something new in the design process, and thus that we are adding value.

Risk and the variability associated with it, are inherent and desirable characteristics of design processes. They are at the heart of a design process's capacity to generate information.

The design factory needs variability, so it needs tools that allow us to coexist with variability.

When you dig below the surface you discover that most change programs are motivated by two forces: imitation and obedience.

Events that are less probable contain more information.

Our testing processes need to have an adequate failure rate to generate sufficient information.

Each iteration starts on the base of the quality of the previous pass.

A process is a way of preserving learning that occurs when doing an activity.

A whirlwind at Reading station in 1840

As well as the super statue of the World War I soldier at Paddington by my namesake I also spotted this at Reading station last week. It's on platform 4 but you have to look quite hard to find it.

Faulty LiveScribe pen

I bought a 4GB LiveScribe pen from Amazon uk on May 11th. The first time I used it worked but repeatedly refused to allow me to register online. The second time I tried to use it refused to record audio and it continues to refuse. I phoned the LiveScribe support number on June 22nd and after navigating my way through several "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" menus I spoke to a human being. I was asked to send details of the pen, my computer (a bog standard MacBook Pro), and a log file. I did this immediately.

It's now June 29th, seven days later and I have heard nothing. Not even an email acknowledging receipt of the details I sent. So I rang again today. I spoke to the same lady in technical support. She explained that she had forwarded the information I sent to technical support but that they were backed up with work which was why no one had got back to me yet. This doesn't sound promising - John Seddon would call that Failure Demand.

She said she would escalate the case and promised someone would contact me tomorrow. We will see. Stay tuned!

Thinking ahead - I'm wondering how long should I give them to fix it. And if they can't whether I'll ask for a replacement or a refund...

Update. They called back as promised. They talked me through doing a firmware upgrade (which I had already tried to run and fortunately still had in my download cache). Part way through I got a message saying "your pen is not recognised". Despite appearances I was told this was not a message from the firmware upgrade, but from livescribe desktop which was also open. And on a manual firmware upgrade the livescribe desktop can apparently interfere with the firmware upgrade (which is no doubt what happened to me the first time). So I closed livescribe desktop and restarted the firmware upgrade. And this time it worked! Hoorah. I have audio recording back. So less than top marks for it not working first time, but nearly top marks for helpful support.

Charles Sargeant Jagger

I was at Paddington station a few days ago and I stopped to look at this superb statue (it's at the edge of platform 1). I noticed it was by Charles Sargeant Jagger!

The Hávamál

translated from the original by Björn Jónasson ISBN 9979-9070-0-2. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The ethics of the Hávamál are above all rooted in the belief in the value of the individual.

Attending a feast: No man should call himself clever but manage his mind. A sage visitor is a silent guest. The cautious evades evil. Never a friend more faithful, nor greater wealth, than wisdom.

Happiness: He is unhappy and ill-tempered who meets all with mockery. What he doesn't know, but needs to, are his own familiar faults.

Financial sense: Become not a beggar to the money you make. What's saved for a friend a foe may take. Good plans often go awry.

Moderation and prosperity: Moderately wise a man should be not too crafty or clever. The best of lives is led by those who know the measure of many things.

Shyness: A log's flame leaps to another fire kindles fire. A man listens thus he learns. The shy stays shallow.

Foresight: A man should know how many logs stubs and strips of bark to collect in summer to keep in stock wood for his winter fires.

The use of power: A prudent man wields power in modest measure. With brave men he finds that none is foremost or excels in all things.

Everyone has his use: The lame rides a horse the maimed drives the herd the deaf is brave in battle. A man is better blind than buried. A dead man is deft at nothing.

Winner or loser?

As well as running an evening CyberDojo at the NDC 2010 conference in Oslo last week I also attended an excellent morning workshop run by Matthias Skarin. He used several experiential exercises one of which was a simple rally-car driving simulation. In the game everyone stands in a circle and has to choose "Hi" or "Lo". Then you find out what the person to your left and to your right chose and look up your score. For example, Left=Hi, Me=Lo, Right=Lo, check the sheet, Hi-Lo-Lo = 2 points. Then repeat 15 times, each time adding your points to your running total, and rearranging the circle lowest-score to highest-score, slowest driver to fastest driver.

The points table was cleverly structured so there was a tension between working for yourself or for the whole circle. After a few rounds I had an idea. I decided to play the game by trying to maximise the score of the person to my left even if it meant coming last. I have to admit part of the reason for this was I was only half awake, (I hadn't had enough coffee), and figured I wasn't going to do very well anyway. Each round I simply explained what I was doing to the person to my left and asked whether they would like me to pick a Hi or a Lo.. The effect was dramatic - I rapidly became the slowest car as people overtook me. And because we were standing in a circle, in no time at all, the person to my left was the fastest car. Then there was another dramatic effect - since the person to my left was gaining a significant advantage from me each round they rapidly accelerated ahead of the second placed car. At the end of the game two cars had noticeable scores; mine because it was so low, and Paul's (the person to my left) because it was so high.

Afterwards someone pointed out that I had been the driver of the slowest car. I explained how I had played the game and suggested that maybe I had been the navigator in the fastest car!?

The soul would have no rainbow if the eyes had no tears and other native american proverbs

is an excellent book by Guy A Zona (isbn 0-671-79730-1). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

I seek strength no to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy - myself. [Tribe unknown]

The more you give, the more good things come to you. [Crow]

The song is very short because we understand so much. [Navajo]

If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies in yourself. [Minquass]

You are never justified in arguing. [Hopi]

No answer is also an answer. [Hopi]

Every fire is the same size when it starts. [Seneca]

The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives. [Sioux]

Seek wisdom, not knowledge. Knowledge is of the past, wisdom is of the future. [Lumbee]

Force, no matter how concealed, begets resistance. [Lakota]

Everything has a beginning. [Kiowa]

God teaches the birds to make nests, yet the nests of all birds are not alike. [Duwamish]

Macbook plug design flaw? No

I was on a train recently and I tried to plug my macbook plug into the socket. Nope. The depth of the plug was too great. As it happened I had a 4 way adapter in my backpack so I was able to get power anyway!

Update! Thanks to Phil's suggestion I checked my cable drawer and found the other cable :-) I popped it into my laptop bag and found myself on a GWR train again yesterday. No need for a 4 way adapter this time (which I didn't have anyway - I only carry that when I'm running a CyberDojo).

What Did You Say?

is an excellent book (subtitled The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback) by Charles and Edith Seashore and Jerry Weinberg (isbn 0-924771-33-X). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

If you're not absolutely sure they want your feedback it's best not to offer it.

When the data and their model don't match, most people discard the data.

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.

We tend to learn only in new situations. In new contexts.

The more we try to control, the less influence we are likely to have.

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

The less investment you have in changing the other person, the greater the likelihood that each of you may grow.

Improving a relationship doesn't always mean making it closer.

Viking Ship Museum

I went to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo a few weeks ago. As I arrived a group arrived on a bus. They were led round the museum by a man who talked about the exhibits and viking life in general. I quietly attached myself to the group and listened to what he had to say. It was really fascinating stuff. For example, at one point he mentioned that Norway has the highest incidence of multiple sclerosis in the world. And that the countries with very high incidence seem to be the countries the Vikings invaded!

Implementing Lean Software Development

is an excellent book by Mary and Tom Poppendieck. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

If you focus on driving utilization up, things will slow down.

We've watched CMM and ISO 9000 as their focus changed from quality improvement to certification.

Toyota believes that consistent excellence in product development starts with "towering technical competence in all engineers". At Toyota "Developing people is fundamental to the managers job."

If you expect teams to meet aggressive deadlines you must limit work to capacity.

The behaviours that ranking systems encourage are competition, hiding information so as to look good, and hiding problems so as not to look bad.

There is at least as much knowledge created by experiments that fail as is created by finding a solution to the problem.

Western companies think of knowledge as something that is written down. Japanese companies think of written knowledge as only the tip of the iceberg; most knowledge is contained in subjective insights, intuitions, hunches, and mental models. This tacit knowledge does not come from studying, it comes from experience.

Probably the biggest mistake we can make is to regard refactoring as a failure to "Do it right the first time".

The mark of an excellent organization is not that they are without problems; it is that they are without systemic problems.

In The Living Company, Arie de Geus points out that the average life expectancy of a multinational corporation is between 40 and 50 years. People live for an average of 75 years, so they can expect to outlast perhaps three quarters of the companies that existed when they were born.

If the learner hasn't learned the teacher hasn't taught.

The hole isn't in my part of the boat

After the XP2010 conference in Trondheim its nice to back home and walking Patrick to school each morning. I collect rubbish on the walk back. A whole carrier bag full after one week away. It's a four minute walk. And I live in the country. People must actually be winding their car windows down just to throw out rubbish! :(

XP 2010 cyber-dojos

I had a great time at XP 2010. I ran one cyber-dojo (on the left) with Jeremy Lightsmith and another (on the right) with Olve Maudal. Both went very well and had up to 18 players at a time.

Every time I run a cyber-dojo I learn new things. And new ways to make it simpler. For example in Olve's cyber-dojo one player had to leave early and one of the laptops was their laptop. In a normal code-dojo that would be a problem. But in a cyber-dojo it's not an issue. You just fire up another laptop and carry on where it left off.

Olve also invented a much simpler way to do the musical chairs. Instead of having one timer to rotate the keyboard driver within each group and another timer to shuffle the groups we now have just one timer. When it dings the keyboard drivers in each group have to get up and find a new group - which they then join in a non-driver role. Much simpler!

Writing software is writing

In his book Patterns of Software Richard Gabriel devotes a whole chapter (Writing Broadside) to writing about writing. Writing software is an act of writing so to get better at writing software he suggests it is a good idea to get better at writing in general. I was reminded of the chapter when I listened to Kevlin Henney's Skillsmatter podcast Rethinking unit testing in C++.

In his talk Kevlin discusses identifiers. Names. Names are funny things. When developers choose names they have a difficult task. They have to balance two forces that are very definitely competing against each other. On the one hand longer names give more room to express intention - to create intention revealing names. A declaration is a declaration of intent, an expression is an expression of intent, a statement is a statement of intent. But on the other hand the names of our classes, our functions and our objects also participate as sub expressions in larger and larger expressions. In the context of use the pull of brevity is very powerful.

Kevlin reminds us that some names are never intended to be used at all! They never participate in expressions that we write! Brevity should not be a concern for such names. In a language that supports reflection your test framework will call the test method for you. The only time you write the name of the test method is when you define it.

Developers typically have a lot less practice at writing names when they are freed from the shackles of brevity so it's not really surprising test method names often smell so bad. They smell bad because they are too concise! Loosen up! Give yourself some space. Instead of writing a test method called test_index think about the intention deep inside your head and try to express that as a whole sentence. That's a difficult practice to develop. If I'm pair programming and as the navigator I see the driver struggling with a test method name I sometimes ask them to "put the mouse down and step away from the keyboard". We discuss, face to face, what the intention is. Freed from the code-silo mentality of the keyboard we can usually move quite rapidly from test_index to test_indexing to test_out_of_range_indexing to test_out_of_range_indexing_throws_exception.

The last additional suffix ...throws_exception is an important one. A good test name should express an expectation. This is a transformational name change. It transforms the idea of testing so that it becomes not-testing. The name becomes a proposition. And the tests inches closer towards being an executable specification.

Another example of the context of test/proposition names having a different meta-context from regular code is naming style. Kevlin suggests that even in a language with a strong camelCase or PascalCase naming convention there is a strong argument for naming test methods with underscores_as_separators. You aren't calling these methods. They aren't participating in larger expressions. The only time they appear is in a diagnostic. Experiments have shown there is a small but definite cognitive delay in reading camelCase or PascalCase identifiers once they get beyond around 30 characters.

bureaucracy

Back to quotes table-of-contents

From The Right Stuff

The esprit throughout NASA was tremendous... Bureaucratic lines no longer meant anything. Anyone in Project Mercury could immediately get to see anybody else about any problem that came up.

From Beyond Culture

By their very nature bureaucracies have no conscience, no memory, and no mind.

From Jerry Weinberg (in person)

Bureaucracy can be measured by how much people don't know why they're doing what they're doing.

From Good to Great

The purpose of bureaucracy is to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline. Avoid bureaucracy and instead create a culture of discipline.

From It's Your Ship

More often than not, bureaucracies create rules and then forget why they were needed in the first place, or fail to see that the reasons for them no longer exist.

From Quality Software Management: Vol 2. First Order Measurement

Bureaucracy is each thing in control, but everything is out of control.

From John Boyd - the fighter pilot who changed the art of war

Anything new and different is feared by a bureaucracy.

From A Little Book of f-Laws

A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say 'no' but none to say 'yes'.

From Beating the System

Bureaucrats are usually empowered to say no to even reasonable requests, but they cannot say yes to them. This requires passing requests to a higher authority. Saying no inflates bureaucrats' self-images.

From the Mind of War

he was always testing the limits - of airplanes, people, science, the military, and, most especially, bureaucracies.

From Ackoff's Best

The most variety-decreasing type of social system is one we call a bureaucracy.

If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't. [Admiral Hyman G. Rickover]

From Are Your Lights On?

Bureauracies always begin with some process of selection - a process which is never quite "natural" selection.

From Quality Software Management: Vol 2. First order measurement

Bureaucracy: people doing things whose purpose they don't understand.

From the DevOps Handbook

Bureaucracies are incredibly resilient and are designed to survive adverse conditions - one can remove half the bureaucrats, and the process will still survive.

The Buffalo Bridle

One of my favourite Laws from Jerry Weinberg's The Secrets of Consulting is The Buffalo Bridle, which is all about motivation.

You can make a buffalo go anywhere just as long as they want to go there.