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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08.17.09
Posted in Agile, Teams at 8:49 pm by Pablosan
This year has been filled with change, especially in my career. Up until the last year or so, I have focused on solid, pragmatic software development practices. I still get to spend some time in that arena, but my attention is now split: I’m also spending a lot of time mentoring teams on solid, pragmatic project management practices. I’m also spending far too much of my time babysitting tools (of course, spending ANY time babysitting tools is too much time), but that’s a story for another day.
A happy side-effect of this new focus is that I have a new soapbox! This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me well, since I am a fairly avid soapbox collector. 
Anyway, here it is:
Project management is not about tracking effort: it is about measuring progress.
As simple as this sounds, I am amazed at how many Project Managers, many with decades of experience, insist on tracking effort and ignore measuring progress. I have an idea as to why: tracking effort is much easier than measuring progress.
The difficulty starts with a required shift in mindset. Changing the way we think about things is hard, especially when the old way of thinking has been reinforced by years of repetition. One way I have found to start down the path of reprogramming my brain is making subtle shifts in the questions I ask. For instance, instead of asking “how long did that take?” I can ask “what benefit did we get from the effort expended?”
This introduces a second problem. While the first question above is easily answered with a “concrete” number (I could chase the rabbit track of “define effort”, but I’ll resist), the second question leads to more questions: what is the benefit we received? Was it a one time bonus, or will it pay back dividends over time? How do our customers perceive the benefit? Is their perception accurate? How can we objectively measure it? Where is the business value? …and many more. In other words, it encourages us to think and requires a great deal more effort.
Asking a question that gives me a number to plug into a spreadsheet may give a fleeting sense of accomplishment. Asking the harder questions forces me to demonstrate progress, which is much more beneficial and proves much more fulfilling.
So, are you tracking effort or measuring progress? Maybe it’s time to start asking the right questions!
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