A Simple Matter of Software

Becoming A Craftsman

Interesting new book on craftsmanship. 

All craftsmanship [is] skill developed to a high degree.  By one commonly used measure, about ten thousand hours of experience is required to produce a [craftsman] ... as skill progresses, it becomes more problem-attuned ... whereas people with primitive levels of skill struggle more exclusively on getting things to work  ... At its higher reaches, technique is no longer a mechanical activity; people can fell fully and think deeply what they are doing once they do it well.

Producing a chair that holds a persons weight does not make you a master carpenter, producing a software program that doesn't crash does not make you an architect. 

Many programmers simply progress through more sophisticated forms of trial and error without ever really mastering their craft.  That is a shame.

Changing Behavior - Focus on what you want not what you don't want

Slate has a good article on changing people's behavior.  This article is about children's behavior but most of the ideas apply just as well to a 40 year old as a 4 year old.

You begin by deciding what you want the [person] to do, the positive opposite of whatever behavior you want to stop. The best way to get rid of unwanted behavior is to train a desirable one to replace it. ...

Then you tell the [person] exactly what you would like him to do. ...

Whenever you see ... what you would like, or even something that's a step in the right direction, you not only pay attention to that behavior, but you praise it in specific terms ...

If you don't see enough of the desirable behavior, then you can work on it using simulation ... Your objective is to arrange for as much reinforced practice as possible, ...  A brief but intensive period featuring lots of reinforced practice, often somewhere between a couple of weeks and a month, can make long-lasting or even permanent changes in ... behavior.

Going ballistic never helps, but explanation aimed at improving ... understanding can actually play a useful part in this approach. When combined with reinforced practice, explanation has been proven to speed up the acquisition of behavior.

Need for nimbleness

The interesting thing about the Microsoft-Yahoo merger to me is not that two companies that lost out to Google now are combining, but rather why they lost to Google in the first place.

 

Here is one common thread in the commentary:

"Yahoo management has not been nimble, Microsoft has not been nimble, Google has a management team that is nimble and dynamic."  - SF Chronicle

Over the past few years, "Yahoo became less nimble ... " -  Diab

"I'd add that since Google is a faster growing, more nimble company than Microsoft or Yahoo ... " - Techsmart

"Word has it that Yahoo's once nimble and entrepreneurial culture has turned sluggish and bureaucratic. The company's organizational structure and compensation system appears to be rewarding silo behavior that inhibits change."  - Steve Tobak

"... what some see as an inability to respond to more nimble (though considerably larger) Google" - CNET

Falling back into a "comfort zone" and building mechanisms (bureaucratic or otherwise) that "ensure stability", is a typical human response to success.  In its time Yahoo had plenty of success and slowed their rate of change as a result. 

For a Internet service business where the "network effect" applies and there are "very low switching costs" for the end user.  It is critical that you respond to success by staying nimble and accelerating your rate of progress.  Otherwise someone else will see what you have achieved so far and take the initiative to eat your lunch.

 

Setbacks and Success

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal,
it is the courage to continue that counts.”
                                      - Winston Churchill

There are some typical software venture dysfunctions that come from assuming that success is final and failure is fatal. 

The success delusion tempts you into sticking with what worked last year instead of focusing on what needs to change to succeed this year.  In the famous words of Andy Grove "only the paranoid survive" and success unfortunately drives out paranoia.

Failure tempts you into abandoning a direction that could succeed with an appropriate and active course correction.

Simplify to find the essence

"Our lives are frittered away by detail; simplify, simplify."
                                                              — Henry David Thoreau

Clinton, Machiavelli and the challenge of change

"It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out ... than to initiate a new order of things.  For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who could profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arriving partly from fear of their adversaries ... and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had an actual experience of it."
                                                                     - Machiavelli writing in "The Prince"

A favorite quote of former President Clinton. 

 

The good kind of failure

“I have not failed. I have just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.”
                                                                                    - Thomas Edison

Resiliency and learning from your "mistakes" are critical to building a successful venture. 

Organizing your efforts to avoid "mistakes" and to have no risk of "failure" is a bad strategy.  Organizing your efforts to "fail faster" so that you can learn from your mistakes and course correct as you go is a good strategy.

It is important to distinguish between making new mistakes which are the good kind that you learn from; and simply repeating the same mistakes that have been made before and should now be avoidable.

                                                                               copyright 2007 Kerry Champion

You can't improve without change

Different Isn't Always Better, But Better's Always Different
                                                      -  Jonathan Schwartz

Adding engineers to a late project can make it later

 

Major Premise: Sixty men can do a piece of work sixty times as quickly as one man.
Minor Premise: One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds;
Conclusion: Sixty men can dig a post-hole in one second.
                                                                       - Ambrose Bierce

The Mythical Man-Month recognized in the software engineering world the fallacy that work is arbitrarily sub-dividable and fungible, but obviously Brooks was foreshadowed. 

One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds becuase he has freedom of movement, no need to coordinate his actions, and can focus on his task.  Sixty men digging a posthole spend more time coordinating, cooperating and avoiding each other, than they do actually digging.  Similarly in other tasks there is an optimal point were people can work together effectively and efficiently, beyond that point you start to get diminishing (and eventually negative) returns with each person added to the effort.

                                                                               copyright 2007 Kerry Champion 

Simplicity is hard work

"I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn't have the time."
                                                   - Mark Twain