Archive for May 2016
Special–ism
If there is a common theme to this “Agile” journey that you’re almost certainly on if you’re reading this—and there might not be—then a good candidate for that could be a certain series of unpleasant, ego–challenging realisations.
It began with programmers, back in the late 90s, as eXtreme Programming took hold and the unpleasant, ego–challenging realisations dawned that: the common old–school programmers’ preferred mode of engagement with users—pretending that they don’t exist—and their preferred mode of engagement with their employers—surly passive–aggression leavened with withering cynicism—and their preferred mode of engagement with each other—isolation interspersed with bouts of one–up–manship—and their preferred mode of engagement with the subject matter at hand—wrestling it into submission via the effortful application of sheer individual intellectual brilliance—weren’t going to cut it any more.
Over time, the various other specialisms that go into most industrial–scale software development—and IT systems work more generally—have had also to come to terms with the idea that they aren’t that special. With the idea that locking themselves into their caves with a sign outside saying “Do Not Disturb, Genius at Work” and each finding a way to make their particular specialism into the one true bastion of intelligence—and the true single point of failure, and that not seen as a bad thing—is not going to cut it any more.
A cross–functional, self–organising team will of course contain, must contain, various individuals who have, though education, experience or inclination, a comparative advantage over their colleagues in some particular skill, domain, tool, or whatever. It would be perverse indeed for a cross–functional, self–organising team not have the person who knows the most about databases look first at a data storage problem. And it would be foolish indeed to let that person do so by themselves—at least pair, maybe mob—so that the knowledge and experience is spread around. And it would be perverse indeed for a cross–functional, self–organising team to make a run preventing any one member of the team having a go at any particular problem merely because they aren’t the one with the strongest comparative advantage in that topic. And it would be foolish indeed for such a team to not create a physical, technical and psychological environment where that could be done safely. And so on.
Different disciplines have embraced their not–special–ism at different times and with different levels of enthusiasm. “Lean UX” represents the current batch, as designers get to grips with the idea that they—in common with ever other discipline—turn out not to be the special and unique snowflakes uniquely crucial to the success of any development endeavours. Where is your discipline on this journey?
TDD as if You Meant It at Agile Mancs 2016
Please share your experience in comments to this blog post. Would be most grateful if you also shared your code. Thanks.
Corrigendum to Lightning Talk at Agile Mancs 2016
Wrong Theorem
We’ll see on the video, I guess, but I think I said “Mean Value” when I should have said “Central Limit”. My mistake. It had been a long day, and they were handing out beer.
On the β-distribution
If you are going to try that sort of Monte Carlo estimation for yourself you don’t need to wrestle with the full-blown β-distribution, which is a bit of a beast. You can approximate it well enough using a triangular distribution. The base of the triangle is the closed interval—time, money, whatever, I’ll talk about time—between, as Dan North suggested, that time which if the work took less than that you’d be very, very surprised and that time which if the work took much longer you’d be very, very embarrassed. Somewhere in that interval—and very rarely in the middle—is the time that you think it’s most likely for the work to take* and the apex of the triangle lies above that point. The altitude of the apex must be such that the area of the triangle is 1.
Have fun!
Getting to not having to do any of that
Being asked for a estimate is, it’s true, a sign that your interrogator doesn’t trust you.
Usually this is not because they are monsters who relax every evening with a well-thumbed copy of The 48 Laws of Power and a small glass of chilled kitten’s tears. Usually it’s because, firstly: they have suffered a long history of paying people to develop software for them and not getting much back in return, and secondly: they don’t know you from Adam or Eve.
In a better world, they would trust you, because your heart is pure and your intentions good and wouldn’t if be great if we could all just get along? And it would.
Until that world arrives we will have to deal with suspicious, hard-bitten CFOs who have a keen understanding of their fiduciary duty. They—or their subordinates—will ask you for an estimate. Some of them will want then to interpret your estimate as a commitment, perhaps with contractual remedies for failure to meet same, and so hold your feet to the fire to deliver exactly against those estimates. I strongly recommend not doing business with the ones that cleave tightly to such a position. They are setting up themselves, and you, for failure.
But many will be amenable to understanding that, as McConnell says, the point of estimation is not to predict outcomes but to see if you are in with a chance of managing your way to success.
How to break the cycle?
Deliver value. Early, often, reliably. Very early, very often.
With contemporary engineering practices and tooling this can now often be done very quickly. Even in those “heavily regulated” environments. When you have—and maintain—a reputation for delivering value then your conversations with the people who’re paying you to do that change dramatically. From: “how much will X cost?” To: “how much do I need to pay to have you keep on doing J, P, R, S, Q…?” That’s much more agreeable for all concerned.
Stepping back
YMMV, but I’ve found, while doing and managing software development work in and for VC funded local startups, publicly traded global blue-chips, privately owned product companies, government departments and many other scenarios, on four continents, that when something about the scenario says “new”, whether it’s that you are a new supplier, or they are a new CFO, or whatever, then requests for estimates—maybe with some story about “just for budgetary purposes” attached—will come; but once a reputation for reliable delivery of value is established they fade away, until something changes that takes us back to “new”.
It would be nice if we didn’t have to erect this infrastructure of estimation every now and again, and you can if you wish refuse to work under such terms—you may then find work unpleasantly hard to come by—or you can invest in re-educating people not to ask those questions—but the first rule of consultancy is not to solve a problem you aren’t being paid to solve—or you can roll with it, demonstrate the simple lack of necessity of estimation in an effective organization and wait for the next cycle which often will be less severe than the previous one. And so on.
Good luck!
* Whenever you are asked for an estimate, for anything, you should reply with at least these three numbers—or their equivalent—and if that shape, never mind the content, of answer is not acceptable then you have discovered that you were not being asked for an estimate.
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