In a hotel in Beijing. I wonder what the words say? "Please press the buttons gently" perhaps?
I hope you don't want floor 7
In a hotel in Beijing. I wonder what the words say? "Please press the buttons gently" perhaps?
Use-Case cartoon speech bubbles
UML Use Case/Scenario ellipses look quite similar to cartoon speech bubbles. And each ellipse is of course supposed to be "spoken" by an actor. So sometimes when I'm coaching/training/etc I cut out ellipse shaped pieces of card and do some role playing.
You can have fun too. For example, developers often phrase their use-cases from the implementation perspective rather than from the actor's perspective. So when they write "Lend a Book" as the name of their Use Case, you can get them to actually try it. Pretend your inside a library, give them a book, and ask them to role play their use case. Like this... (the headband stops their arms from aching)
At which point someone role playing a Librarian can react like this...
...which makes everyone realize they should really have written this:
You can have fun too. For example, developers often phrase their use-cases from the implementation perspective rather than from the actor's perspective. So when they write "Lend a Book" as the name of their Use Case, you can get them to actually try it. Pretend your inside a library, give them a book, and ask them to role play their use case. Like this... (the headband stops their arms from aching)
At which point someone role playing a Librarian can react like this...
...which makes everyone realize they should really have written this:
Talent is Overrated
is the title of another excellent book (isbn 1857885198) by Geoff Colvin. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
Deliberate practice is not what most of us do when we think we're practising.
Most organizations are terrible at applying the principles of great performance. Many companies seem arranged almost perfectly to prevent people from taking advantage of these principles for themselves.
nothing, it turned out, enabled any group to reach any given grade without putting in those hours. ... There is absolutely no evidence of a 'fast track' for high achievers.
memory ability is very clearly created rather than innate.
General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt has been clear about what the company is looking for: someone who is externally focused, is a clear thinker, has imagination, is an inclusive leader, and is a confident expert.
The roadblocks we face seem to be mostly imaginary.
Jerry Rice was the greatest because he worked harder in practice and in the off-season that anyone else; he spent very little time playing football; he designed his practice to work on his specific needs; he did much of the work on his own; it wasn't fun; he defied the conventional limits of age.
Practice is so hard that doing a lot of it requires people to arrange their lives in particular ways.
The advantage of practice was cumulative.
Deliberate practice requires that one identify certain sharply defined elements of performance that need to be improved, and then work intently on them.
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.
Practice is designed, so it can be designed well or badly.
Great performers never allows themselves to reach the automatic, arrested-development stage in their chosen fields. The essence of practice, which is constantly trying to do the things one cannot do comfortably, makes automatic behavior impossible.
In fact what they [great performers] have achieved is the ability to avoid doing it automatically.
It's Your Ship
is the title of an excellent book by Michael Abrashoff (isbn 0446529117).
As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
A recent Gallup study found that when people leave their companies, 65 percent of them are actually leaving their managers.
What I suddenly realized was that I had the power to do this all along. I just never had the self-confidence.
Something happened as a result of those interviews. I came to respect my crew enormously.
Secrecy spawns isolation, not success.
No matter how fantastic your message is, if no one is receiving it, you aren't communicating.
You earn trust only by giving it.
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.
Once leadership opportunities are squandered, you can never get them back.
If a rule doesn't make sense, break it.
If a rule does make sense, break it carefully.
I felt as small as a man could. I had just had my core values calibrated by someone half my age.
One-size-fits-all programs tend to fit none.
Leadership is mostly the art of doing simple things very well.
Open yourself. Coldness congeals. Warmth heals.
The goal shouldn't be to reduce the standards for some, but to raise everyone else to the highest possible level.
Train for unity.
If you don't intend to act, then don't bother to ask if it is going on. It will only make matters worse.
I kept walking around the ship, questioning the crew, drawing them out.
Having fun with your friends creates infinitely more social glue for any organization than stock options and bonuses will ever provide.
Classroom summary techniques
A technique I use a lot when teaching/coaching is to get the participants to periodically do a summary. I have two main techniques:
The first technique (which I tend to use for smaller groups) is to ask the group to just shout out anything they can remember. Whatever they call out I write on a whiteboard and we briefly recap that topic. When the calling out slows down we stop. Then we vote; each person places three ticks on the whiteboard. I count up the ticks and we see what the top three are.
For a larger group I ask for just one thing from each person. I make it completely clear that you can choose anything you like for whatever reason you like. When someone calls something out I briefly summarize that topic but I don't write anything down.
In both cases I've found it's important not to simply ask each person, round-robin fashion, based on where they're sitting. It's much much better if you simply wait for the first person to speak, and then wait for the second person to speak, etc. That way the more confident ones naturally speak first and the less confident ones gain confidence by seeing the more confident ones go first.
The first technique (which I tend to use for smaller groups) is to ask the group to just shout out anything they can remember. Whatever they call out I write on a whiteboard and we briefly recap that topic. When the calling out slows down we stop. Then we vote; each person places three ticks on the whiteboard. I count up the ticks and we see what the top three are.
For a larger group I ask for just one thing from each person. I make it completely clear that you can choose anything you like for whatever reason you like. When someone calls something out I briefly summarize that topic but I don't write anything down.
In both cases I've found it's important not to simply ask each person, round-robin fashion, based on where they're sitting. It's much much better if you simply wait for the first person to speak, and then wait for the second person to speak, etc. That way the more confident ones naturally speak first and the less confident ones gain confidence by seeing the more confident ones go first.
Deming's knowledge of variation
Mary Poppendeick's excellent InfoQ video is online at
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/poppendieck-agile-leadership
Her summary of Deming's Knowledge of Variation at around 28 minutes is great and well worth watching.
Tandberg product development
My good friend Olve Maudal of Tandberg did a talk about Product Development in TANDBERG for the Oslo Lean Meetup. His slides are online at
http://bit.ly/cxNvjc
and are well worth a look if you care about what it takes to make world class software.
The vaccination approach to learning
Thanks to Tobias Fors for tweeting the following onto my radar.
Reading up on how learning works, I came across a couple of quotes on the subject. I particularly like the one about the vaccination approach to knowing - it exposes our fantasy that all it takes is to “send people back to school”, and then everything will be fine.
Explaining the metaphor Tobias quotes Kurt Lewin:
The learners become their own subjects and no longer objects to be filled with packages of knowledge in the manner of what Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner call the vaccination approach to knowing - “where education is something you take and, when you have taken it, you’ve had it, and if you’ve had it you are immune and need not take it again.”
2,390,000 all of a sudden
As a self-employed software coach-consultant-trainer-developer-enthusiast-etc I have to try and market myself. My marketing strategy is simple - I try to do stuff to increase my Google ranking. That's it. I monitor this by regularly typing my name into Google and seeing how many hits it generates. It's been around half a million for quite a while. I don't know why, but this morning it's suddenly jumped to over 2 million!
Skills Matter - Agile Development in C#
I'll be running Skills Matter's Agile Development in C# 3 day training course (starting March 3rd) in London. The course material is written by Kevlin Henney and is excellent. I'm really looking forward to it. Feel free to email me if you're thinking of attending.
It makes me shiver
Shiver by Natalie Imbruglia is playing. Some of the lyrics are catching my ear:
When you tell me stupid things, like you do I just have to, have to, have to, change the rules
In a rush, never trust ... if I'd only stop and take my time ... with you I'm running somewhere I can't get to
Mending a bike puncture
Ellie's bike had a puncture today. I used some tyre-levers to prise the tyre off its wheel rim. Then I carefully pulled the inner tube out and was puzzled to see a large section had folded over on top of itself! How did that happen? A hurried previous repair? I attached a pump to the valve and pumped some air into the inner tube. Then I filled a bowl of water and plunged the inner tube into the water, shifting it along section by section. Suddenly a tell-tale stream of air bubbles revealed the source of an invisible hole in the inner tube. Right in the middle of an existing patch. More evidence of a hurried previous repair. I was struck by a few thoughts
The first is that air, like software, is invisible. To get the hole to reveal itself I switched to a different medium, from air to water.
The second is the importance of root cause analysis. Find the thorn and remove it. Otherwise you'll end up patching the patch just as I did.
Drive
is the title of another excellent book by Dan Pink.
As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
The first ten years of this century [have been] a period of truly staggering underachievement in business, technology, and social progress.
Rewards, by their very nature, narrow our focus.
By offering a reward, a principal signals to the agent that the task is undesirable.
Mediocrity is expensive.
Consider the very notion of "empowerment". It presumes that the organization has the power and benevolently ladles some of it into the waiting bowls of grateful employees.
Management isn't the solution, it's the problem.
Effort is one of the things that gives meaning to life. Effort means you care about something, that something is important to you and you are willing to work for it. [Carol Dweck].
Being a professional is doing the things you love to do, on the days you don't feel like doing them. [Julius Erving]
In the end, mastery attracts precisely because mastery eludes.
How people spend their money may be at least as important as how much they earn [for well-being].
The Puritan Gift
is the title of an excellent book by Kenneth and William Hopper. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
For a century and a half, historians have been asking themselves the chicken-and-egg question: which came first: Puritanism or Capitalism?
A system is a set of connected things or parts, bound together to a purpose.
No enemy is more terrible than money, and no friend is more trustworthy.
At the heart of the system lies mutual trust.
Given's approach was avowedly descriptive rather than prescriptive.
In spite of appearances, good decision-making is essentially the same in all walks of life.
A belief that life was not merely best understood, but also best experienced, as a struggle.
You do not own a dog and bark.
Statistics are a wonderful servant and an appalling master.
The Cult of the (so-called) Expert would severely damage the great tradition of 'generalist', 'hands-on' management.
No greater damage could be done to our economy or to our society than to attempt to 'professionalize' management by 'licensing' managers, for example, or by limiting access to management to people with a special academic degree [Peter Drucker, 1954].
I absolutely loathe the idea of professional management [Jeff Immelt, 2004].
A Whole New Mind
is the title of an excellent book by Dan Pink. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
At the Yale School of Medicine, students are honing their powers of observation at the Yale Center for British Art, because students who study paintings excel at noticing subtle details about a patient's condition.
The MFA is becoming the new MBA.
Stories are how we remember.
One of the best ways to understand and develop the aptitude of Symphony is to learn how to draw.
The most creative among us see relationships the rest of us never notice.
Everything you create is a representation of something else.
Poets are our original systems thinkers.
More males than females have brains that systematize and more females than males have brains that empathize.
The people who will thrive will be those who can toggle between the two. As we've seen again and again, the Conceptual Age requires androgynous minds.
If you are laughing you cannot think. That is the objective we achieve in meditation.
People have enough to live, but nothing to live for; they have the means but no meaning.
Washroom tap psychology
Have you ever been in a washroom and failed to get any water out of a tap? Of course you have. We all have. It happens to me all the damned time.
The taps I hate the most are those stupid infra-red taps. The ones that are supposed to burst into life when you waggle your hands under them. Waggle to the left, waggle to right, in-out, in-out, doing the hokey-kokey. Your occasional random reward, if you're very lucky, is a short dribble of water.
The infra-redness is a ruse - it's fake - the tap is really part of sophisticated psychology experiment. Out of sight a white-coated clipboard-clutching technician is carefully monitoring your rising frustration. A favourite ploy is withholding water once you've dobbed a large blob of soap into your hands. And then watching as you fruitlessly search for a paper towel to wipe away the soap.
Another favourite is doctoring a clearly-full soap-dispenser into a soap-refuser. And of course, setting the force of the air-blower hand-drier to either barely-enough-to-fog-a-mirror or enough-to-lift-a-twelve-stone-man-clean-off-the-ground but never anything in between.
I miss the old-style taps.
BOYD The fighter pilot who changed the art of war
is the title of an excellent book by Robert Coram.
As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:
He was determined to excel athough he did not yet know in what area. He only knew that he had to do something better than anyone had ever done it before.
Boyd is the only known Hun driver to work in the dangerous low-speed end of the airplane's envelope. And that was how he solved the adverse yaw problem.
They might have lost three or four pounds during the strenuous high-G maneuvers. They were thirsty and longed for a cold beer. But first they had to catch a ride on the truck that served as the flight-line taxi. They headed back to ops for the debrief, the most important part of the mission.
...more usable energy always goes into a system than comes out, because there is unavailable energy called entropy.
Tactically, the ability to quickly slow down is as important as the ability to quickly speed up.
Boyd despised optimization.
The Air Force launched a Zero Defects Campaign, and the base commander at Eglin wanted every person on base to sign a pledge saying he would make no mistakes during the coming year. Most organizations at Eglin already flew a flag saying the office was 100% FOR ZERO DEFECTS. But Boyd knew, as did almost everyone who signed the pledge, that he and everyone else would make mistakes. He thought Zero Defects was a stupid idea and refused to sign. A group of lieutenants working for Christie not only followed his lead but raised a flag that proudly proclaimed there were 100% AGAINST ZERO-DEFECTS.
Study after study shows that the higher the rank a military officer ascends, the less likely he is to make change.
You gotta challenge all assumptions. If you don't, what is doctrine on day one becomes dogma forever after.
Anything new and different is feared by a bureaucracy.
He did not become fixated on technology or "one-point" numerical solutions.
Boyd worked daily to remove things.
A twenty-pound maintenance ladder does not simply add twenty pounds to the aircraft.
Again and again they practiced.
In life there is often a roll call. That's when you will have to make a decision. To be [someone] or to do [something]? Which way will you go?
The lightweight fighter had such an extraordinary thrust-to-weight ratio and could recover energy so quickly that energy dumping became a tactic of choice rather than of desperation.
Boyd liked ambiguity.
One cannot determine the character or nature of a system within itself.
He must operate inside his adversary's time-scale.
People, ideas, hardware - in that order.
"You synchronize watches," Boyd shouted, "not people."
Another Great Week At Tandberg...
...is coming to an end. Tuesday and Wednesday I taught an Advanced C course. Thursday Olve Maudal and I did some work preparing for our Code Archeology talk at this years accu conference. I think it's going to be really great. I also had two really great pair programming sessions. I was flipping through Mary Poppendeick's Lean Software Development book and I noticed there was a page about Tandberg. She's been to Tandberg and rates it as the gold standard. I couldn't agree more. I've been fortunate enough to be asked back many times and each time I am awed by how good it is on so many levels. And then on the very next page of her book John Boyd is mentioned, which is a coincidence as I'm reading Robert Coram's book on John Boyd at the moment. I'm looking forward to the next time already.
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