Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

Bufallo, the Theory of Constraints and Beer

Cliff Clavin from Cheers:

Well ya see Norm, it's like this...  A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo.  And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members.

Clarke thinks:

Interesting fact Cliff.  This means that the fastest bufallo are slowed down too and they forgo their chance for personal excellence so that the whole heard may survive.  Interesting!  But then if the fastest did run faster then they would lose the safety of the herd. 

Hmmmm ... is there a Win-Win solution here?  Can TOC help?  Why yes.  First, we should identify the slowest buffalo, then we should help them to speed up - rollerscates perhaps? - so that the whole herd might go faster and escape their hunters... yeah! 

Cliff continues:

In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells.  "Excessive intake of alcohol, as we all know, kills brain cells, but naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine."   "That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers.

Clarke:

Good point.

Dr Michael Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (KAI) Theory

One of the most useful things I learnt during my MBA was Dr Michael Kirton’s Adaption-Innovation (KAI) Theory. 

 

The theory says that everyone can be located on a continuum from highly adaptive (boring to you and I) to highly innovative (interesting).  Adaptors like to make small improvements.  Innovators like to make radical improvements.

 

Adaptors	Innovators
Do it better	Do it differently
Work within existing frame	Challenges, re-frames
Fewer solutions	Many solutions
Prefer well established situations	Set new policy, structure
Essential for ongoing	Essential in times of change

 

Since you’re reading this blog then you’re almost certainly an innovator like myself and you think that Adaptors are boring old farts and Innovators are interesting people who want to make the world a better place.  Your Adaptor colleagues and friends would probably describe you as dangerous. 

 

The KAI inventory is a 32 question test that scores you on the continuum.  The scores are normally distributed around a mean of 95.

 

Typical scores for various jobs are:

Civil servants	80
Maintenance engineers	85
Production managers	90
Bank managers	90
Teachers	95
MBA students	100
R&D managers	102
Marketing managers	105
Personnel managers	105

 

I scored 120.  

 

Adapters and Innovators don’t mix well together - a gap of 20 points between individuals can cause friction.  Can you imagine yourself (an assumed innovator) working in the civil service?  Or, me ( a confirmed innovator) working in a large, old, pensions company?  Yikes.

 

Sadly, we Innovators really need those Adaptors.  Innovators tend to think of new ideas but maybe not think through the details.  Adapters act as their safety net and keep the ship on course.

 

Note: I originally had a mock test here but I removed it upon request from Dr Kirton.  See later blog entries. 

 

You can fid someone to administer the real test here.  But,If you score less than 100 then how the hell can you live with yourself?

 

What a good idea

A Cut and paste from Alan Francis:

Steve Freeman pointed me at the Napkin Look and Feel. It's a Swing Look'n'Feel by Ken Arnold thats designed to make GUI prototypes look like prototypes.

What a damned good idea.

Agile Project Management with Scrum - by Ken Schwaber

Last year I attended Ken Schwaber's Certified Scrum Master training in Edinburgh (which means I can put this nice logo on my website).

I learnt more about managing people and projects during those 2 days than I did during the first 2 years of my MBA.

The bad news is that since I don't work in an agile environment (in fact, it cost me a weeks wages from my own pocket and I took annual leave to attend) I haven't been able to put the training into practice and my Scrum knowledge has faded and I've mentally misplaced much of Ken's advice. 

The good news is that Ken's latest book Agile Project Management with Scrum contains many of the stories and details from the course, plus lots more.  And, since it's written down I can read it again and again and again. 

It's a truly excellent text.  If you live, or want to live, in the Agile world then go buy it.

David and Goliath

Fellow AgileScotlander and ScrumMaster Craig Murphy has just done a Prince 2 training course. 

He contrasts Prince 2 with Scrum here & here.

It's the little things that make life easier

I started using the free Wordweb dictionary/thesaurus a few weeks ago ...

WordWeb is a quick and powerful international English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It can be used to lookup words from almost any Windows program, showing definitions, synonyms and related words. There are also many proper nouns and examples of usage. You can search for words matching a pattern, find and solve anagrams, and optionally search a large number of extra word lists.

... and now I find I'm using it several times a day.

Speaking of Feedback

Speaking of feedback, I'd really like some.

I like the analogy in my screaming babies, evolution and feedback entry but when I re-read it  this morning it just didn't feel quite right. 

Can you take another look and give me feedback?  Is the analogy useful?  How does the blog entry read?  What could I have done differently?

Comments, or email (look left now for the link) would be appreciated.

Fame can be fleeting - especially for famous MBA graduates.

Last week I noticed that if you searched google for "famous mba graduates" then this weblog came out on top.  The very next day I went into work and told them so.  But it didn't work.  In fact my blog wasn't mentioned in the first dozen or so pages (I looked, believe me).

But it works again ... today ... as I type that is.

I know that fame is fleeting but what on earth's going on with Google?  Did they find out that I hadn't officially graduated yet and fiddle the results.  If so shouldn't they have bought an add like they did recently: clever Google paid for this ad to always appear at the top of the results page when people searched for "jew" (this was in reaction to bad publicity because there were a lot of nasty results coming out on top).

"Agile" methods are like screaming babies because ...

My beautiful 18-month-old daughter is the modern world's most fine-tuned and effective feedback mechanism ever.

This morning she woke me at 6:30 - just 10 minutes before the alarm goes off - from the far end of the house, demanding birdfisck (breakfast).  Her mother says this is cute and a sign of intelligence :)  Hmmmm ...

Evolution has a lot to answer for:

• Silent cave-babies died of nappy-rash. 
• Hungry babies that giggled and smiled lots starved.
• Only the babies with teeth-achingly high-pitched screams survived to evolve into today's babies.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm ... where's this going?

Now.  Like the silent babies of the past, my current (large waterfall, critical path) project will probably die of nappy-rash.  All the project managers will be shocked.   Because:

• According to the plan were looking pretty good. True, most tasks - as shown on the plan - are on schedule or 90% complete - but the feeling at the coal face is that we're extremely unlikely to make it.  And, how come the remaining tasks are much shorter than when they were first planned 6 months ago.  And, have some tasks magically disappeared?  And there's lots of risky integration work still to come.
• Even better, we're only 0.2% over budget.  But we haven't missed our schedule date yet so we would be, wouldn't we.
• The application looks great in the demos.  But then no one saw the panic before the demos.

The waterfall approach can't give accurate feedback until near the very end, because the biggest risks don't happen until near the very end.  Everything appears fine (i.e. 90% complete) then you try to integrate the various components and things go belly-up.  Finally, the baby squeals.  But the baby's not looking to good so you call an ambulance and maybe the baby survives.  Then the customer finally sees product and they're surprised: it doesn't do quite what they thought it would.  The baby screams again and you call the ambulance again,  but the baby's pretty sick by this stage ... if only the baby had screamed earlier.

"Agile" methods are the screaming babies of software development:

• Agile projects deliberately force high risk tasks into the early iterations.  If they fail then the baby screams loudly and gets feed or its nappy changed.  It lives to scream another day. 
• Agile projects show the customer working software from the first iteration and the baby screams if it doesn't like what it sees.  You feed the baby or change its nappy and the baby lives to scream another day. 

So anyway ... my lovely daughter woke me up 10 minutes early.  Actually, it's happened a few days in a row and it's unlike her.  I wonder if something's wrong?  She doesn't seem to be teething and her nappy was fine.  She was happy enough to see me, but was very interested in breakfast.  She was hungry.  I wonder if she's eating enough before bed? I wonder if ...

 

Refreshingly Honest

This is refreshingly honest. From today's Financial Times: Michael O'Leary, Ryanair chief executive, said on Tuesday that the Belgian authorities had written to the airline demanding the repayment of around Euro 3m. "We have written back to say fuck off," he said on Tuesday.