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.

The velocity/wip game

While I was at Jerry Weinberg's Problem Solving Leadership workshop last week (which was truly fantastic) I showed a group of fellow attendees a very simple velocity/wip game I've invented. You simply create some cards and arrange them into columns. Each card has a number written on it which is it's estimate. The photo shows the setup for our game; the left column (eg Analysis) contained the numbers 1,8,2; the middle column (eg Design) contained the numbers 1,1,5; the right column (eg Testing) contained the numbers 8,1,2. We put one person on each column; Darrin on analysis, Ted on Design, and Tim on Testing. Play proceeds as follows:

• each player gets N (eg 3) dice which they each roll over and over again
• if a player rolls a 1 they add one to their running tally (which starts at zero)
• if their tally reaches a number on a card in their column they can move that card one column to the right and reduce their tally by that number
• that's it! (you can also add wip limits to the columns if you like)

Paul was on the timer and gave us one minute. After the minute was up we added up the...

• work-in-progress: the total of the cards still in the three columns
• velocity: the total of the cards that got moved out of the rightmost column (into an extra rightmost column called Done)

The first minute

The wip was 25 and the velocity was 11. This makes a total of 36 which is greater than the total we started with. This is because there is also an extra left-most column called Backlog which contains more numbered cards. Darrin was on the left Analysis column and after moving all three of his cards into Ted's middle Design column he pulled some more work into his column from the Backlog. Despite this Ted was starved of work for part of the minute.

The second minute

We reset the board back to it's initial position and decided to try and increase the velocity by smoothing the work. We split the high cards into multiple smaller cards. For example, the 8 was split into 3,3,2. Then we did another minute's worth of work. This time the wip was 18 and the velocity was 18. Once again this makes a total of 36 and once again Darrin pulled in more work from the Backlog after emptying his Analysis column. Because the work was less lumpy Ted wasn't starved and the velocity went up.

The third minute

We reset the board back to it's initial position from the second minute. This time we decided to try and lower the work-in-progress left over at the end. After all, if the project got canceled that wip would be waste. To do this we agreed not to introduce any new work from the backlog, and also that anyone's dice could contribute to the tally on anyone's column. Then we did another minute's worth of work. This time the wip was 9 and the velocity was 20.

Summary

Simply by smoothing the work and working together we increased velocity by a factor of ~2 (11 to 20) and reduced the wip by a factor of ~3 (25 to 9). Simple!

The way to weath

is an excellent book by Benjamin Franklin. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

We are taxed twice as much by our idleness, three times as much by our pride, and four times as much by our folly.

A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two different things.

The eye of the master will do more work than both his hands.

Buy what you do not need and soon you will sell your necessities.

It is easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it.

Experience keeps an expensive school, but fools will learn in no other.

If you want to be wealthy, think of saving as well as of earning.

What maintains one vice would bring up two children.

How to win friends and influence people

is a great book by Dale Carnegie. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Any fool can criticise, condemn, and complain - and most fools do.

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. (quoting William James)

Good manners, said Emerson, are made up of petty sacrifices.

I made it a rule, said [Benjamin] Franklin, to forbear all direct contradiction of the sentiment of others, and all positive assertion of my own.

I judge people by their own principles, not by my own. (quoting Martin Luther King)

Any fool can try to defend his or her mistakes - and most fools do.

If there is any one secret of success, said Henry Ford, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own.

Einstein on conventional schooling

At Jerry Weinberg's Problem Solving Leadership workshop one of the handouts contains this quote from Einstein which spoke to me:

I soon learned to scent out that which was able to lead to fundamentals and to turn aside everything else, from the multitude of things which clutter up the mind and divert it from the essential.

The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examinations, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect upon me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle, that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry.

The Book - On the taboo against knowing who you are

is a great book by Alan Watts. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages.

Attention is narrowed perception.

We need a notation for almost anything that can be noticed.

The human individual is not built as a car is built.

Differentiation is not separation.

To say that certain events are causally connected is only a clumsy way of saying that they are features of the same event, like the head and tail of the cat.

In the Nootka language a church is "housing religiously," a shop is "housing tradingly," and a home is "housing homely."

It is symptomatic of our rusty-beer-can type of sanity that our culture produces very few magical objects.

We have scrubbed the earth clean of magic. We have lost even the vision of paradise, so that our artists and craftsmen can no longer discern its forms.

No work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.

The goal of action is always contemplation - knowing and being rather than seeking and becoming.

Idolatry is not the use of images, but confusing them with what the represent.

I Ching

I do I Ching some mornings. It's part of a deliberate effort to try and improve my subconscious! Today the dice chose 1,2,1,1 which means tetragram ten.

Inner Harmony
In managing your instincts and embracing Oneness,
  Can you be undivided?
In focusing your Influence,
  Can you yield as a newborn child?
In clearing your insight,
  Can you become free of error?
In loving people and leading the organization,
  Can you take no action?
In opening and closing the gateway to nature,
  Can you not weaken?
In seeing clearly in all directions,
  Can you be without knowledge?

Produce things, cultivate things;
Produce but do not possess.
Act without expectation.
Advance without dominating.
These are called the Subtle Powers.

5 inch buttons

I spent a great morning with my friend Mark, an ace wood and metal craftsman. He made some 5 inch oversize wooden buttons (for a panto costume I think). I took loads of notes and photos and plan to write the morning up in an extended blog entry. But just for now here are some photos of his workshop. You don't go into his workshop so much as put it on! Like a old jacket that fits perfectly.

Its always a people problem

There seems to be a common underlying theme running through many software development classics (who have I missed?):

In The Secrets of Consulting Jerry Weinberg writes:

It's always a people problem.

In Peopleware Tim Lister and Tom DeMarco write:

If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark street and looks for them on the adjacent street because, as he explains, "The light is better there."

In The Mythical Man Month Fred Brooks writes:

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

In Patterns of Software Richard Gabriel writes:

My overall bias is that technology science, engineering and company organization are all secondary to the people and human concerns in the endeavor.

Notice that none of them say it's a person problem.

Craig Larman's Scrum Master course

I've just spent a thoroughly enjoyable 2 days attending Craig Larman's 2 day Scrum Master course at the invitation of Olve Maudal. If you're looking for a really superb Scrum Master course I don't think you'll find a better course or a better person to hold it for you than Craig.

The photo is of a game we (team 3) created in one of the many hands on exercises. We called it the Scrum Board Game. I played the role of Product Owner and I learned that I tend to interfere too much. Sorry team 3!

Zen Soup

is the title of an excellent book by Laurence G. Boldt. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The words of truth are always paradoxical [Lao Tzu]

Water becomes clear through stillness.

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win you're still a rat. [Lily Tomlin]

Self-confidence is nothing special. It is the absence of self-consciousness, nothing more, nothing less.

The do, or art, of work is a matter of bringing awareness, grace, and excellence to the way we work.

The work will teach you how to do it. [Estonian Proverb]

It isn't that they can't see the solution. It is that they can't see the problem. [G. K. Chesterton]

Discipline is simply a matter of doing what we must, without wasting time or energy worrying whether or not we feel like it.

The word art comes from a Latin root meaning "to arrange". We can think of an artist in any field as a master arranger.

Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. [Epictetus]

The four XP values

Quite by chance I've notice several recent blog entry quotes mention the four XP values:

• Communication: Community has to do with communication.
• Simplicity: The art of maximizing the amount of work not done.
• Feedback: Practicing without feedback is like bowling through a curtain that hangs down to knee level.
• Courage: 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.

The Way of Zen

is an excellent book by Alan Watts. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

For things made are separate parts put together, like machines, or things fashioned from without inwards, like sculptures. Whereas things grown divide themselves into parts, from within outwards.

...as soon as a boundary is defined it has two sides.

Man is involved in karma when he interferes with the world in such a way that he is compelled to go on interfering, when the solution of a problem creates still more problems to be solved.

Form is precisely emptiness; emptiness is precisely form.

When reading a difficult book it is of no help to think, 'I should concentrate,' for one thinks about concentration instead of what the book has to say.

Hurry, and all that it involves, is fatal.

A good haiku is a pebble thrown into the pool of the listener's mind.

If Christianity is wine and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea.

An Introduction to General Systems Thinking

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg. Like many of Jerry's books it also has a repeat snippet page here. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

As Leonardo observed, "the boundary of one thing is the beginning of another."

...systems thinkers use the term "interface" to describe the part of the world that, like the two-faced god Janus, looks both inside and outside at the same time.

...for everything has a fringe of involvement with its surroundings (quoting P.W. Bridgman)

Systems, on the average, are more tightly connected than the average.

...it is better to analyze in terms of doings or happenings than in terms of objects or static abstractions (quoting P.W. Bridgman)

And with this shift in time there occurs a shift in the entity of concern - from an object, a pattern of matter in space, to a behavior, a pattern of events in time. [R.W.Gerard]

Why do things stay the same?

How can we know the dancer from the dance? [William Butler Yeats]

Although we may identify the system by its functions, this is only a convenience, for the "real" identity lies in "the permanence of the relations among the component parts" - the "structure". (quoting Herbert Spencer).

The more sure we are, the more likely we are to suffer an illusion.

To be a successful generalist, one must study the art of ignoring data and of seeing only the "mere outlines" of things.

If something explains everything, it explains nothing.

Safer C

is an excellent book by Les Hatton. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

A central and hard-earned engineering principle in older engineering areas such as mechanical engineering and civil engineering is that simplicity rules.

The way to improve seems to be to master one thing at a time by doing a lot of it until quality naturally emerges.

Quality is not a flag in the company car park.

This book will argue forcibly that there is a property of software which experienced programmers can identify with quality without knowing the function of the software.

The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. [Igot Stravinksy]

Early versions of a number of Beethoven's pieces exist and give strong evidence of being written by a mere mortal; indeed, some are extraordinarily naive. Greatness emerged only after considerable refinement.

a profoundly important step in the maturity of a discipline is the enforcement of hard-learned previous experience and the recognition that complexity must be strictly controlled to that which necessary and no more.

A human programmer reads a programming language just as a compiler does. Therefore, languages that are difficult to write compilers for are likely to be difficult to read if those features that cause difficulty are used.

the content is more important than the style.

The author has always believed, however, that if something is statically detectable and therefore easily removeable, but likely to fail only once in the lifetime of the galaxy, it should be removed, because that occurrence might be next week and might kill someone. If its presence is known and its implications understood, it may well be negligent in the eyes of the law to leave it.

You can't test quality into software.

The psychology of computer programming

is an excellent book by Jerry Weinberg. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Programming is, among other things, a kind of writing. One way to learn writing is to write, but in all other forms of writing, one also reads. We read examples - both good and bad - to facilitate learning. But how many programmers learn to write programs by reading programs?

Ultimately, what the management want is kept promises.

The amateur, then, is learning about his problem...The professional, conversely, is learning about his profession.

To learn we must be willing to make mistakes.

If a programmer is going to make something of his experience, he must learn how to learn.

Schedule is similarly limiting - we need only cite the apocryphal experiment which tries to make a baby in one month by putting nine women to work on the job as a team.

The Swiss elect a general to head their armies when war threatens. When there is no war, there is no general - but there are other leaders chosen according to what needs there are for leadership.

A programmer would not really be a programmer who did not at some time consider his program as an aesthetic object.

Programming is a unique form of communication in which human beings take an active role and machines often a passive one.

It's not so much the solutions we need, anyway; but the experiences in trying to get them.

Rabbit debugging

My bedroom looks out over the pictured field. Rabbits live along the far hedge so Natalie and I decided to borrow a pair of binoculars to get some close up views. The first time I tried them I just could not get a clear image. I fiddled for a while with no joy. Then I decided the binoculars were just fine and the problem was elsewhere. Thinking about it, I suddenly realized where - the house was built in 1897 and the bedroom still has the original sash window. The glass in the window is quite "curvy"! When I lifted the sash and looked at the rabbits directly everything came into focus nicely.

Push-bike pump adapter pattern

Bicycle inner tubes have two kinds of valves; the bronze kind on the left and the silver kind next to it. Rather than supplying each valve with its own flexible tube (to connect to the pump) this one cleverly uses only one - the silver valve also doubles as an adapter for its bronze partner. Neat.

The road less travelled and beyond

Is an excellent book by Scott Peck. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Community has to do with communication.

The word "diabolic" comes from the Greek diaballein, which means to throw apart or to separate, to compartmentalize. It is the opposite of "symbolic" which comes from the word symballein, meaning to throw together, to unify.

Virtually all truth is paradoxical.

Consciousness is inevitably associated with pain.

Perhaps the best measure of a person's greatness is the capacity for suffering.

The essence of this discipline of balancing is unlearning and "giving up" something in ourselves in order to consider new information.

Through the learning of emptiness, we experience a temporary state of consciousness in which the mind is utterly open and receptive and therefore totally alert.

There is no formula. All such decisions must be made out of the "agony of not knowing".

There is something far more important than inner peace: integrity. Integrity requires, among other things, the willingness to endure discomfort for the sake of truth.

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.

All discipline is a form of submission.

Speaking the truth - particularly when it requires some risk to do so - is an act of love.

The development of consciousness is thus, among other things, a process of the conscious mind opening itself to the unconscious in order to be congruent.

The unconscious is always one step ahead of the conscious mind.

The basic tenet of systems theory (which is actually not a theory but a fact) is that everything is a system.

Contingency theory (which, like systems theory, is not a theory but a fact) simply states that there is no one best type of organization.

Systems inherently resist change.

Jay Miller - circus scrum master

I took Patrick to Jay Miller's circus last Sunday. We absolutely loved it. A thought struck me while I was watching - a circus is lot like a high-productivity software team - a group of highly expert, highly professional, highly motivated individuals, with a variety of different talents, coming together for a specific purpose. Hours and hours of deliberate practice behind the scenes. Clowns providing plenty of fun. A ring mistress lightly controlling the whole show. Out of sight back-room staff doing all the lighting, sound, and fake smoke wizardry...
My best moment of the whole show was a failure. Henrik (not Kniberg) the extreme juggler bounced balls off the ground rather than throwing them up into the air. It was just amazing. A complete blur of motion. Then he tried some extra balls. And then some more. And then he dropped two. He turned to the audience with his arms out as if to say "this is hard you know". And the audience gave a big cheer. It was a great failure. If you want to do something spectacular you have to be prepared to fail.