Clarke Ching's Rocks and Snowballs

Good day

I've had a good day today.

This morning I went for a hospital consultation and learnt that I don't have a particular gene mutation which would pretty much guarantee that I got early-dementia.  He said earlier that there was a 25% chance that I did.  My wife's an old-age-psychiatrist and she already knew that so we now have one less thing to worry about!  That's gotta be good.  

And ...  my Dr also told me that the new diabetic medication I'm on (which I'm already utterly wowed with) also helps reduce my triglycerides - the very same triglycerides which put me in hospital 2 years ago and very nearly killed me.  So that's even better!

And then this afternoon I had an interview for a job which has me salivating.  I hope I'm going to be offered the job, but I don't like to count my chickens.  I can't say the company's name but I put them up there with Zara and Toyota in terms of business-model innovation.  I really want this job ... Fingers crossed.

the queen

I wonder if the queen has ever used a whiteboard ...

Prince 2

I ran an "Agile Crash Course" for 10 managers last friday.  They were all "between jobs" due to this horrible economy so they had spare time on their hands and most of them figured their was no harm in spending a day - free - learning about agile.  

Early on in the day I asked everyone to imagine a continuum on the back wall with "already love agile" at one end and "very distrusting of agile" at the other, then I go them to point to where they'd place themselves.  Not very scientific, but I find it useful.  One person said they'd worked as a customer on an agile project and had enjoyed it even though it was a little awkward at times; one person said she knew so little that she had no opinion; the rest placed themselves in the distrusting half of the continuum.  

The big questions during the day were:

(a) I use and like Prince 2.  How's this work with Prince 2?  

I'm not a prince 2 user so I couldn't answer but I suggested that we tackle this at the end of the day.  The conclusion was Agile didn't conflict with prince 2.  [That said, I imagine some Agile folk may claim that prince 2 conflicts with Agile.]

(b) How do you measure the cost of an agile project?

I thought I gave a fairly convincing answer to this (variable scope, fixed cost calculated to safely cover the vaiable-minimum product, a few good, honest conversations with the customer before the project starts) but I failed with at least two of them.  That bothered me and I think (on reflection) that I should have asked the participants to figure the answer out (like I did with the prince 2 question) rather than giving an answer.  I'll try that next time.

(c) Why are you so cynical about Agile?

I think Agile suffers from "feature fatigue" - it's too complex, too big, too confusing.  Maybe I'm getting old, but I want something simple that I know will work, not something exciting.  I up-played the "most of this isn't knew" and "prioritization is key" and "just do smaller projects would be a good start" and "figure out how you'll test something as-and-before, rather than after,  you build it will save you a lot of work" angles.  I down-played the "the first thing you must do is change the furniture around and hide half the computers" angles.  

The end result is that when I asked them all to point to the continuum on the wall at the end of the day, all but 2 of the 10 had moved a good chunk towards the happier end of the scale.  

I count that as a success ... but I wish I could have moved the other 2!

Wild chocolate mint

Last weekend we discovered chocolate mint growing in someone's herb garden. It's a green minty looking plant with browny-red colour running through the leaves and - truth - it smells and tastes just like chocolate mint icecream. No kidding.

Today we've taken the kids to a local play area which is in the middle of a forest. While hunting for tadpoles my 6 year-old daughter discover what smells and looks just like the chocolate mint we saw growing in the garden.

I'm not brave enough to taste it.

It might be the same thing, it might not. It might kill me.

(I'm happy picking wild stuff - we use a lot of wild garlic in the spring, for instance, and I'm looking forward to when the wild blackberries and raspberries ripen. But I know what they are and I know they're safe.)

So ... Have you got any advice or experience with wild chocolate mint?

Please share!

Thanks Clarke Clarke Ching - www.clarkeching.com +44(0)7920114893 - Author of Rocks Into Gold - www.RocksIntoGold.com - and, coming soon, Rolling Rocks Downhill, a business novel.

Need a new laptop battery?

I recommend these guys: http://www.laptop-battery.org.uk/

They're based in Hong Kong and I would not normally have bought from them if they hadn't been recommended to me by a guy on a course I ran recently.  He had a sony laptop, like me, and the battery had failed so he bought a new one.  It has better battery life than the old one and it only cost £50.

Based on his recommendation I emailed them with my laptop details, they recommended a battery very quickly, I bought it, it arrived quickly, I've been using it fora couple of weeks and it's superb.

It cost £50.  They're £300 new.  This battery lasts much longer than the old one.

As a consequence: I've put my netbook away and I'm using my 2 year-old battered, but rejuvinated, laptop instead.  The keyboard is bigger and now the battery is too.

I really dispise Sony, btw, for "gouging" me. 

Muscle memory ...

1.  My Dad drives a truck.  He has driven the sam brand of truck - an Isuzu -  since I was 12.  He upgraded the truck ever 3 or 4 years.  

He used to drop us to school in the truck.  Every day I'd climb up into the truck, one-step, two-step, sit.  It wasn't the sort of thing I had to think about; it was just something I did.  My muscles just remembered how to climb into Dad's truck - just as they remembered how to walk and how to run.

But then five or six years ago I went home to New Zealand to visit my family.  We were taking our new born baby over to show her off.  I asked Dad if he'd mind if I went with him to work one day. He said he'd like that and the following day I joined him. 

Now here's the weird thing.  Even though it''d been 10 years since I'd been in his truck my legs remembered how to climb up into it - one-step, two-step, sit.

Only trouble is: some time during those 10 years Isuzu had added a 3rd step.  My legs - on autopilot - didn't know what to do.  I was okay for one-step and two-step, but sit got awfully uncomfortable.  

Muscle memory.

2.  About 10 or 12 years ago I had to do some COBOL coding.  I hadn't done it for a half dozen years and I hadn't used the IBM mainframe for just as long ... but the moment I opened up the editor my finger tips knew exactly where to go, including which function-keys to press.  

Muscle memory.

3.  When I want to do a google search I often alt-tab to gmail, type in the search term, press tab twice and do a "web search" rather than a gmail search.  It might sound daft, but it works for me.  My fingers remember what to do.

Muscle memory.

4.  Today, for some reason, Google has removed the web search button.  I am flummoxed.  My finger tips don't know what to do.

Muscle memory.

5.  A few weeks ago I attended a talk given by a sincere young person ... who thought the whole world should convert to DVORAK keyboards because they were more efficient.

He didn't understand muscle memory.

If you change software for a living ... don't' forget muscle memory.

Manager vs. Leader - or - Manager AND Leader?

Forgive my whinging but ... it really annoys me when I see blog posts which go on about the difference between leaders and managers then implies that leaders are better than managers.

Some people are leaders AND managers.

Some people are excellent leaders AND excellent managers.

Some people are excellent leaders but poor managers.  If they're excellent leaders then they probably delegate the management to an excellent manager.

Some people are poor leaders and poor managers, but they're good at doing other things ... and hopefully they avoid the management / leadership roles.

And so on ...

Beating the System - Ackoff and Rovin

I'm currently reading Beating the System by Russell Ackoff and Sheldon Rovin.  I'm not sure how I found the book but I managed to find a very cheap copy via Amazon so I bought it because I like Ackoff's thinking.  It's a sweet little book filled with little stories about how "David" beats bureaucratic "Goliath".

Here's one I particularly enjoyed:

Despite security classification of all documents coming out of the Pentagon during WWII, the Pentagon acquired evidence that the Germans gained access to the contents of the most highly classified documents quickly.  Clearly, those illicitly acquiring documents for the Germans knew which ones to select based on security classification.

Consequently, the Army Operations Research Group at Johns Hopkins University was asked to find a way of foiling the enemy.  The project was placed under the direction of a medieval historian.  He looked at the problems in humanistic rather than technological terms.  His conclusion was to terminate all classification of documents and send the Germans a copy of every document produced in the Pentagon.  he reasoned that by the time the Germans sorted through the mess and found the documents that were important, they no longer would be.

Lo and behold, this proposal was not accepted.

Fwd: [AgileScotland] When it just *has* to work: Agile Development in Safety-Critical Environments

Hi Everyone,

Nancy Van Schooenderwoert, a very experienced Agile coach with a very long name, is in Edinburgh next Friday afternoon, the 26th. She's presenting a one-off session, running from 3-5, about *Agile in Safety-Critical Environments* to the agile team at Toshiba Medical Visualizaton Systems(they're one of Scotland's agile success stories). You can see details of Nancy's talk, below.

The folk at Toshiba have very kindly set aside *a few spaces *for the general public. If you are interested then get back to me - clarke.ching@gmail.com and I'll let you know if you've got a spot early next week. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to turn some of you away. If you are particularly interested in safety-critical code then let me know and I'll prioritize you.

Clarke

*When it just *has* to work: Agile Development in Safety-Critical Environments*

Traditional thinking holds that the more critical the application, the more tightly its development must be planned, staged, and controlled. The truth is that a flexible culture is stronger, safer, and more robust. FDA regulatory standards are designed to support a learning organization – fully compatible with Agile! This session gives you practical tips for moving your customers and auditors to a flexible agile approach to planning, team interactions, and risk management. When the culture shifts, the result is not just that teams achieve their goals sooner, but safety is greatly enhanced. Process/Mechanics

Learning outcomes

* Get ammunition for conversations with managers, to show why incremental design is safer than up-front design
* See examples of how several medical device companies are already reaping increased ROI from using agile team discipline
* Understand how the traditional method of hazard analysis is more dangerous than the agile approach
* Be able to explain to your customers (internal and external) the benefit - to them - of working collaboratively with you
* Grasp how the regulatory requirement for separate reporting chains for development and QA need not prevent Agile collaboration

Who Should Attend Key attendees are described here as “Personas”

Patricia - a seasoned project manager. She prefers agile development to her old attempts to force teams to conform to an overly prescriptive plan. But, her stakeholders still ask for the same predictability and schedule commitments. And the regulatory documentation needs seem to force a “big design up front” approach so she ends up with a mix of agile and waterfall practices that is only marginally better than waterfall.

Don - the product Quality Assurance representative. Don is responsible for quality concerns of the overall product, only part of which is the embedded software. In particular, Don has to make sure all the requirements of the regulatory agencies (in his world, the FDA) have been fulfilled, and wants to be sure the Agile approach will result in the kind of information he needs to provide.

RocksIntoGold - the serialized version.

I'm rather pleased that stickyminds.com are serializing Rocks Into Gold.  

Here's part 1 of 4.

I keep getting lots of nice notes about the wee book and it's now been viewed over 8,000 times on slideshare and stickyminds will bring it to a much, much wider audience than I could ever achieve on my own.  I'm very pleased :)