07.30.10
Posted in Agile, Journal, Teams at 6:44 pm by Pablosan
I don’t think I’ll end up writing a third “Agile Blindspots” post… there was something that I was feeling very passionate about back in February but, for better or worse, this time I simply waited for the feeling to pass.
It has been a busy year. I knew that new ventures are all-consuming, but knowing it and living it are two very different things. I’m closing in on a full year as an independent consultant, the last six months of which have been with one client. Things have been going great and the client is looking for ways to extend the contract; possibly through the end of the year.
That’s a long time to spend in the same environment, and this comes with a significant danger. In Weinberg’s book, The Secrets of Consulting (you can find the book online, but you’ll probably have to buy it used), he refers to this as “Prescott’s Pickle Principle”:
Cucumbers get more pickled than brine gets cucumbered… A small system that tries to change a big system through long and continued contact is more likely to be changed itself.
I experienced this first-hand in a recent conversation with a friend and colleague who just started working with the same client a little over a month ago. I had just had a closed-door meeting with a member of upper management in which they laid out their plan to address several challenges in their organization. I didn’t completely agree with the plan, but I have worked with this group long enough to know when the decision is final so, except for a few clarifying questions, I accepted the news with very little feedback. As I explained to my friend how this might impact him, his response was “this is the wrong solution. It’s going to cause more problems than it solves!”
My initial thought was “technically he’s right, but he doesn’t have enough experience with this client to know when to accept the inevitable.” And that’s when it hit me: I’ve been pickled.
My job as a consultant is to be a change agent. “Long and continued contact” with a client diminishes my ability to fulfill that role. That is why Weinberg gives the following advice:
To avoid getting pickled, a consultant must not spend too much time with one client. If you can’t avoid this, at least break up the time by working with other clients, even for free… It’s hard to be effective, though, if you’re always switching jobs or clients. Change generally takes both time and continued contact, or at least one of the two. The challenge, then, is how to get the client in long, continued contact with some kind of brine, without the consultant even being present.
The challenge indeed! There is a natural tension: time and continued contact erode a consultant’s ability to affect change, yet affecting change takes time and continued contact. I think there are ways to counteract this and I hope my efforts to do so in my current situation will prove effective. But it is also important to recognize the warning signs and to act in the interest of both your client and yourself.
What are some ways you’ve found to keep your clients “in continued contact with some kind of brine without even being present?”
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02.23.10
Posted in Apple, Journal, News at 9:29 pm by Pablosan
I’ll get back to Agile Blind Spots in my next post, but I have discovered a great app and piece of hardware that has turned my iPhone into an art easel.
Brushes is an iPhone app that was highlighted during the introduction of the iPad a few weeks ago. One of my hobbies is Graphic Arts and I have often bemoaned the fact that I can’t find more time to spend on it. I even carry around a Wacom tablet… that rarely gets used: partially because there is a (very little) bit of setup required, but mostly because I’ve never been able to get comfortable with drawing in one place (on the tablet) while watching someplace else (the monitor) to see how it looks.
Once the iPad rumors hit a fevered pitch, my first thought was that it would make a great graphic arts platform. When Apple highlighted Brushes during the iPad unveiling I decided to purchase it for my iPhone. I played with it a little, but found the lack of accuracy due to using a fingertip somewhat off-putting. I’ve put in many hundreds of hours sketching with a pencil or pen so that approach is completely natural to me. I thought using my fingertip would be close enough to be satisfying, but… well, it isn’t. I really need a writing utensil in my hand.
While I’m really excited about the iPad, it’s looking like it will not ship with a stylus and this is a bit of a disappointment. Enter Ten One Design and the Pogo Sketch, a stylus that works with the iPhone, with newer Macbook trackpads and the iPad (well, once they’re released anyway… Hurry up Apple!!!).
But wait, there’s more! The pièce de résistance: due to a built in Web server that allows you to transfer drawings from Brushes on your iPhone to your Mac and a companion Mac app, Brushes Viewer, you can get a high resolution version of your small-screen artwork. Since the iPhone app actually records your strokes, it can replay those strokes at a higher resolution. Not only that, you can actually watch yourself create your masterpiece and save it off as a Quicktime movie! The max resolution for a static image is 1920 x 2880 and it looks incredible. While I wasn’t happy with the results I was getting using my fingertip, I’m very happy with the results using a stylus. Here is a medium quality (960 x 640) version of my first attempt using a stylus (click on the image to see it full size):
Paul Nelson, 15 February, 2010
The combination of the Brushes app, the Pogo Sketch stylus and Brushes Viewer means I can carry an art studio in my pocket… well, close enough.
I can’t wait to play with Brushes and the Pogo Sketch on an iPad! Oh… and look for a nice tie-in with my Agile Blind Spots series of articles soon!
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01.29.10
Posted in Apple, Journal at 3:14 pm by Pablosan
I’ve purposely refrained from reading too much about the release of the iPad. In all likelihood these points have already been made elsewhere, but this is my view of Apple’s new toy.
I’ll start with the patently obvious (pun intended): exactly like their introduction of the iPod, and exactly like their follow-on introduction of the iPhone, the iPad’s primary raison d’être is to provide yet another portal to content. Steve Jobs brazenly admitted as much in Wednesday’s product announcement, citing a couple of facts:
- Apple has 175 million consumer credit card numbers attached to iTunes accounts.
- Customers have downloaded 3 billion apps for their iPhones and iPod Touches
That’s just applications! What about music and videos?
- As of a year ago (Phil Schiller’s Macworld keynote) iTunes customers had purchased 6 billion songs.
- Over a year and a half ago, customers were purchasing 50,000 videos per day on iTunes. Assuming that hasn’t changed (and the daily rate is likely much higher today), that would be over 18 million video downloads per year.
Interestingly, as the iPhone and iPod Touch opened up new content sales for Apple in the form of videos, the iPad also adds ebooks. So Apple wants you, me – all of us – to purchase our content from them. The devices are simply the conduit. Granted, the folks at Apple are software and hardware artisans, so using their devices to consume all that content is a joy in itself. But I think Apple figured out a while ago that hardware will continue to be marginalized and that “content is king.”
So enough stating the obvious. I’ve heard a few people (geeks, mostly) ask questions that basically boil down to “So what? Who cares?” I have an iPhone. I have a Macbook Pro. The last thing I want to do is lug around a third device that doesn’t give me anything new!
I’ve also heard it stated that the iPad is a let-down because it’s evolutionary, not revolutionary. I disagree with these sentiments. I think the iPad is revolutionary and I think we, as geeks, need to sit up and take notice. It has been a very long time coming, but the way we interact with computers is finally becoming a bit more… human. Lately, there has been a lot of buzz in the IT world about User Experience, stating that it has been a second-class citizen for far too long. We are striving to simplify interfaces and improve user experience. Yet we still expect every computer user to be proficient with a keyboard and a mouse, to understand hierarchical menu systems, keyboard shortcuts, archaic command line incantations, etc.
Years ago, I had an idea for a computing device. The impetus for my idea was the simple thought that “a computer should be as easy to use as a piece of paper.” The iPad is not that device, but it is much closer than a device that uses a keyboard and a pointing device. What is more natural than pointing at something with your finger? The iPad is revolutionary by being a full-scale computing device that we interact with very naturally; directly. It eliminates a layer of abstraction at the most fragile, yet crucial part of any system: user input. This is a Good Thing, and I can’t wait to see where this latest step in improving user experience leads us!
So I, for one, will be lugging around three devices… at least for a while.
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10.04.09
Posted in Agile, Journal, Teams at 6:00 pm by Pablosan
One of the great things about my current gig is the opportunity to work with several, high-caliber consultants. The client has put together a top-notch team that has the ability to easily exceed expectations. The client is also a Fortune 500 company with a very long history of heavyweight process. Our job is to codify their particular approach to Agile, while identifying areas for improvement. The importance of a well-documented, repeatable process has been the focus of many, long meetings.
The irony of the situation has not been lost on us. Our job is to create a franchise model of Agile, so that the company can start stamping out Agile teams like a manufacturer churning out Happy Meal toys. This has been the topic of discussion among the consultants over many lunches and dinners, and even during trips to the airport.
Somewhere along the line, one of us observed that “maybe we should look at this as an opportunity to institutionalize flexibility.” This is, of course, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but I also believe it is indeed our challenge. In fact, I think it is the greatest challenge facing Agile adoption today: how do we make Agile work in a large organization, where conformance, governance, systems integration and the like are valid constraints? It is not enough for a team to know where they are: the organization needs to know where they are, how what they are doing will impact other efforts, how much time and effort is involved, etc.
Several large companies are seeking to provide tools to solve this problem, including one that likes three-letter acronyms that begin with “R”. As far as I can tell, the only thing that has been accomplished so far is to add complexity to an already daunting task. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a process problem solved by throwing tools at it, but that seems to be the first and most frequent solution landed on in Corporate America. Yet the problem is real, pervasive, and needs addressing.
So how do we institutionalize Agile without violating Agile’s core values? I’m not sure, but whoever figures it out stands to make a fortune!
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09.15.09
Posted in Agile, Journal, News at 9:04 pm by Pablosan
Well, there you have it. I made my choice! I’m hanging out my shingle, striking out on my own, etc. People keep asking me if I’m excited. Terrified is, I think, more appropriate.
But I am not completely alone. I’ll be working very closely with these guys. Just to give you an idea of how hip this group is, take a look at their office! Yep, it’s a boat and, yes, they have a nice view of Lake Erie and the Cleveland skyline.
This new opportunity will give me the privilege of continuing to pursue my passion: helping software development teams have a lot of fun making real progress on real projects.
It seems that the current Agile Hype is around Kanban, so I thought I’d tie that in as well. I am both impressed with and concerned about kanban for software development, a new-ish methodology taking ideas from Lean and from the Toyota Production System (TPS). There are many great ideas in this newest evolutionary step in Agile: a focus on quality, limiting work-in-process, balancing demand against throughput, effective prioritization, pull don’t push, continual improvement, eliminating waste, and many more. All of these are powerful concepts (David Anderson gave an excellent talk on kanban, which you can find here).
Why the concern? Well, it seems that certain other Agile methodologies have ended up being more about creating marketable intellectual property than solving real-world problems. And I think that’s an easy trap to fall into. Marketing an idea is important to it’s survival, and that is going to create tension. As long as those behind the Kanban approach stay focused on solving real-world problems, we’ll be fine, but they will have to fight against the urge to over-market their ideas.
I hope they succeed, because I think this latest incarnation of Agile is a very good thing! And I’m looking forward to proving that out over the next several months while watching kanban for software development continually improve!
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09.13.09
Posted in Agile, Journal at 2:32 pm by Pablosan
I have been faced with a minor dilemma. Having been presented with an opportunity to venture off on my own as an independent consultant, I now have to decide between staying in my current position or accepting this new challenge.
It has proven to be a particularly thorny problem. My current contract position has given me an opportunity to make a positive impact that has been noticed all the way up to the CIO. In a company of roughly 10,000 employees, this fact in itself plays a significant role in my selection process. Add to this that I am working under the best manager I’ve ever had doing things that I really enjoy… well, why leave?!
The consulting opportunity, on the other hand, will give me fresh opportunities to dig into new challenges with a group of consultants that I am confident would push the envelope further than I would do on my own. In fact, this opportunity reminds me of the part of Chad Fowler’s book where he quotes Pat Metheny’s advice for young musicians: “always be the worst guy in every band you’re in.” This gig definitely qualifies.
After several days of wracking my brain trying to make a decision, I was reminded of another piece of advice I recently read in Gerald Weinberg’s book, The Secrets of Consulting
. In the book he uses The Principle of Least Regret, specifically in regards to setting your consulting rate, but I think it applies in my current situation as well.
The idea is simple: given a set of options that are roughly equivalent, choose the option that you believe will leave you with the least regret. Another way to consider it is, choose the option which you would most regret not taking.
Having used this principle recently, I am convinced it could be useful in many contexts. For instance, it could help in backlog prioritization on an Agile project. However, I also think that this particular principle will not work all of the time. In other words, it is a great tool to have in your toolbox, but don’t expect to use it in every situation.
So which did I choose? All in good time. There are still i’s to be dotted and t’s to be crossed, so stay tuned!
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08.25.09
Posted in Agile, Journal, Software Development, Teams at 1:01 pm by Pablosan
Fail early, fail often: the meme has been floating around for a while now. I tried to find the original source and the earliest mention of the phrase I could find was on Coding Horror. I doubt this is where things began, but it does show that we’ve been bandying it about for several years now.
It is a catchy phrase, and the parallel with “Release early, release often” makes it that much more enticing. While it sounds like sage advice, I believe it is incorrect and it suggests the wrong emphasis.
I understand why it caught on. We in Corporate America have become incredibly risk-averse, fostering a culture that punishes failure severely. Years ago I was in an organization where the fear of failure was so strong that I watched helplessly as a project limped along for two years, sapping precious time, effort and money from other, more promising projects.
Failing early is good. The advice to “fail often” is perhaps dubious, but even more important is that failure is the wrong emphasis. To take this to the extreme, stringing together a series of quick failures does not bring success. In fact, that sounds a lot like reinforcing bad behavior!
The right emphasis – the right thing to cultivate – is an always-learning attitude. If we end with failure we stop short of the benefit: learning from our mistakes.
Thomas Edison, who was not only a great inventor but an inspiring leader, put it this way: “Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”
Take a look at your company or your team. Are you fostering a fear of failure? Or are you cultivating a culture that quickly identifies mistakes and seeks to learn from them? The former is easy and ends badly. The latter is arduous, but it will enable your organization to accomplish great things!
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08.22.09
Posted in Agile, Journal, Software Development, Teams at 7:30 pm by Pablosan
I was recently reminded of a conversation I had with my manager about a year ago. The test tools trainer and I had just finished up a new curricula for a testing tool being rolled out across the enterprise, and teaching these classes gave me some great visibility into our QA groups.
I was frustrated. It looked to me like there were a large number of attendees in these new classes who seemed unmotivated: even apathetic. My final comment to my manager was “they’re just not cut out for the tasks they are being asked to perform. They should be let go.” Yes, it was a harsh statement and I am grateful to have a manager who is willing to listen to my rants and then calmly put me in my place. Her answer was simply “you know, there could be many reasons for their attitude. Maybe they’re working for a very difficult manager.” At the time I pretty much blew off the reply and thought “there is no excuse.”
I was reminded of this through a conversation with a friend who had been dealing with an extremely abusive manager. I was horrified. I couldn’t imagine a “leader” being so demeaning. My friend had loyally followed the company as they moved their offices a couple thousand miles away. He is an incredibly talented developer and knows how to get things done. He continued to work hard while he was being screamed at (literally), being called incompetent (between expletives) and being accused of a poor work ethic: all while working 70 and 80 hour weeks to do his best to meet ludicrous demands. Fortunately he is now employed elsewhere!
Shortly after that conversation I had the displeasure of witnessing another example of a tyrant manager and, again, I was stupefied. How do people like that get promoted to leadership?! Don’t they realize that a hostile work environment kills productivity?
Of course, maybe these leaders aren’t being treated civilly by their upper management. Who knows? As my manager reminded me: I definitely don’t know, and it’s not right for me to judge them.
Isn’t it time that we move on? Aren’t the days of tyrant leaders in Corporate America long gone?! Couldn’t we try, maybe just for a little while, treating our colleagues and subordinates with civility, respect and exercise a little temperance? I think we would all be very pleased with the results… even us judgmental types! 
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06.13.09
Posted in Journal, Travel at 10:25 am by Pablosan
One of the things I really enjoy about visiting other countries is learning their language. This is not an academic exercise filled with parts of speech and verb conjugations, but learning the colloquial language: idioms, slang and the like. I enjoy trying to understand these nuances and come up with a dynamic equivalence translation to my native tongue.
I made a fascinating discovery in a conversation with one of my colleagues here in Buenos Aires. He came to a point where he was having difficulty translating a word because he was confident the literal translation of the Spanish word “piojoso” would be meaningless to me. So he started explaining that the root word, “piojo”, is the bug that gets in your hair. “Oh, you mean lice?” Someone else confirmed that, yes, lice was indeed the bug. He continued explaining that, when something was old, run-down, dirty, unpopular, etc. they would say it is “piojoso”: lousy.
We probably don’t think about it much anymore, but lousy literally means “filled with lice”, which is exactly the same literal meaning of piojoso. And, just like us, Argentinians no longer associate piojoso with lice. It has taken on its own meaning in both languages, and that meaning is identical in both languages.
How did that happen? Is it just coincidence? If not, who came up with it first and how did the languages get cross-pollinated? They are both romantic-languages and, therefore, share a common heritage. According to Words, lousy in Latin is pediculosus, pediculosa or pediculosum, but does it have the same connotation? I have no idea, but I find it to be a fascinating mystery!
Hmmm… maybe I should become a linguist when I grow up! 
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05.23.09
Posted in Journal, Travel at 8:38 pm by Pablosan
I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with American Airlines over the past few days. I have been making plans for an upcoming business trip, as well as attempting to use my AAdvantage Miles for some summer travel to visit family.
Any of you who have had to deal with this mess of a company will, like me, avoid using their web site at all costs. It has to be one of the worst user experiences on the Web. I’m not the only one who thinks so, and I think Dustin comes to the right conclusion:
At the AA annual shareholder meeting yesterday morning, Mr. Arpey said the company is “taking efforts to improve customer service”. I think this is a shortsighted goal. AA should take efforts to improve the whole customer experience. AA suffers from deficits in every aspect of its business. The website is a horrid abomination, the customer service is generally — infamously — bad, and the casual travel market is practically ignored. The customer experience, from start to finish, for every interaction a customer has with the company is not perfected. That’s where the problem is.
“not perfected” is quite the understatement, in my opinion. My latest call to American Airlines’ AAdvantage Platinum support line is yet another example of this. As a frequent traveler calling what should be their top-tier support personnel, I was greeted by a surly, curt, unpleasant representative and hung up the phone incredibly frustrated.
Oh yeah… and those frequent flyer miles? There are so many restrictions and extra fees that I ended up finding another way to book my travel. So it looks I’m sitting on a mountain of worthless miles from a company that doesn’t care: not even about their most loyal, spendy customers.
It is WAY past time to take my business elsewhere!
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