Peopleware

Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams by Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister is often cited as the classic software development management text; one that rightfully puts the focus on people. So I had heard about it long before finally getting around to reading it recently. It is a really good collection of insights, suggestions and anti-patterns that makes a great read, and good food for thought. Especially because it sweats the little things, like office furniture, interview techniques, and the evils of the telephone.

My favourite phrase in the book:

Management by Hysterical Optimism

Haven't we all seen that in action at some time? (unfortunately)

The authors do however take a little liberty in claiming the Hawthorne effect says people perform better when they're trying something new. Which I believe to be true, but isn't exactly what the Hawthorn effect is (people will be more productive when appreciated or when watched).

My report is not all good however. There more I read into the book, the more I felt the authors' advice was biased towards a certain ideal organisation that is I think by no means universally applicable.

In short: workers all strive to be master craftsmen; they provide their own motivation, vision and goals; management is best advised to just provide the creature comforts and get out of their way.

While many may relate to this (personally I do too), as a general theory of management I think it is a crock. In the 60's they would have called this 'flower power'. In the 50's it would have been labeled a 'communist conspiracy'.

No, I think the real world is a little more complex than that. But Peopleware nevertheless delivers a great deal of practical advice.

Seven False Hopes of Software Management

My favourite "list" from the book...

• There is some new trick you've missed that could send productivity soaring


• Other managers are getting gains of 100% or more


• Technology is moving so swiftly that you're being passed by.


• Changing languages will give you huge gains


• Because of the backlog, you need to double productivity immediately


• You automate everything else; isn't it about time to automate your development staff away?


• Your people will work better if you put them under a lot of pressure

With a preference for the decimal system, I have the temerity to add:

• Build it and they will come!


• We just need a SOA architecture!


• It's going to take too long/cost too much, so can you revise your estimates?

Think Like a Rocket Scientist

I've been lax in my little posts about books I've read. One of the reasons is that I'm now addicted to bookjetty, which makes it sooo easy to track my reading and think "I'll review/blog it later". The other reason is simply time. But reading Jim Longuski's The Seven Secrets of How to Think Like a Rocket Scientisthas prompted me into action again. This is a great book on practical innovation, and generally just getting things done. Although it takes the "Rocket Scientist" as the model (understandable, since Longuski is one), it largely avoids the trap of being elitist and sycophantic. It's just an honest and thoughtful analysis of how rocket scientists work, and presented almost like a pattern language for knowledge workers. The "seven secrets" are actually seven stages of the creative process, from the initial idea generation through to delivery. Each stage includes half a dozen or more "secrets" (or patterns), so the book is more like "The 50 Secrets of How to .." Dream Judge Ask Check Simplify Optimize Do

The book is also littered with great quotes, has a bibliography that immediately adds many books to your "must read" list. Perhaps the best part is however Longuski's ladder of the "Greatest Sci-Fi Films of the Twentieth Century" gratuitously included in the appendix. Longuski clearly has some "issues" with Shuttle-era NASA, but when these intrude on the text, they just serve to highten the drama!

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein

When you find a good move, look for a better one. -- Dr Emanuel Lasker

Do. Or do not. There is no try. -- Jedi Master Yoda

It is often said you can lie with statistics. But-it's even easier to lie without them -- Jim Longuski

PS: I since wrote a reflection on this book called Code like a Rocket Scientist

Show the Whale!

Adam Keys and Geoffrey Grosenbach introduced the term for 2008 on the rails podcast: show the whale.
I think it's perfect, and in my lexicon already!
==> No, this is not the official fail whale logo! The real one was done by Yiying Lu, a young designer from China/Sydney, who now is world famous thanks to twitter's stability problems.

24 Season ... 7?

Props to Sophia for finding me the Jack Bauer quotes at 24 wikia. It's a curse to be reminded how long we've been waiting for Season 7, but great to find out that a two-hour Season 7 prequel, 24: Exile, will air in the US later this year on November 23rd. Hmmm ... time to break out the 1-6 box set again and go sleepless for a week. That will be the longest week of my life;-)

What Customers Really Want

I was involved in a conference last week that left me painfully aware of the missing "voice of the customer". However it did bring to mind a great book I recently read - What Customers Really Want by Scott McKain. Not to be confused with the product management text What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services by Anthony Ulwick. Completely forgettable in my view, and arguably dangerous in the wrong hands ... particularly when it gets into the dangers of having customers actually involved in the process! .. well perhaps one good thing about "What the Customer Wants" is that when picking it out at the library I discovered "What the Customer Really Wants" only a shelf away. I still can't find "What the Customer Really ReallyWants". Back to "What the Customer Really Wants": in the first few pages I was skeptical, expecting the book to be yet another meaningless management ra-ra piece. Luckily Scott managed to catch my attention before too long and it soon became clear that the book is a gem. Scott McKain talks from the perspective of real experience, and his no-bullshit, folksy plain talk is a welcome relief from the "gurus". Importantly though, it is not just about experience, but also the fact that McKain has distilled and can share valuable insights as a result of that experience. Most are in the "bleeding obvious - but why haven't I thought of that before?" category. Even the book's organisation is refreshingly to the point. Six main chapters covering six key disconnects.. What Customers REALLY Want What Business Supplies Compelling experience Customer service Personal focus Product focus Reciprocal loyalty Endless prospecting Differentiation Sameness Coordination Confusion Innovation Status quo "Continuous improvement is the enemy of innovation". That got my attention. It's an interesting point of view: Kaizen - constant change - has its role. But innovation is anything but about being constant - its about seeking the dramatic step change. The problem is that most of us cannot cope with being completely focused on incremental change AND at the same time the search for shattering innovation. The customer is not always right .. but they are always the customer!

Designing the Obvious, the Moment, Not Thinking and how bad design can make you physically ill

I had a violent adverse reaction to the design vomit that is soshiok.sg massive visual overload poorly aliased graphics used instead of heading text shockingly low-res advertising images (at least DBS have had the initial ads used on launch replaced) "social networking features" that pervert the term, like submit a recipe that is an email link!! Deserves a Daily Sucker award and should probably be renamed to soseow.sg I could go on, but it just makes me choke. Best medicine: jump to hungrygowhere, who got there first and have done a vastly better job on the web site. The other essential part of my recovery was to go back and luxuriate in the clarity of thought epitomised by Robert Hoekman's two books on design: Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design Designing the Moment: Web Interface Design Concepts in Action (Voices That Matter) These are two books I think every web designer and, yes, every developer should read. Or have on a bookshelf in easy reach. Designing the Moment is the one I find myself returning to. It takes a case study/cookbook approach and nuts out many of the issues in contemporary UI design. It's not an encyclopedia or complete reference - you will need to go elsewhere for that. But it does get you in the groove (in a "teach a man to fish.." kind of way). Even if my immediate design challenge is not directly addressed, it is great for getting in the right frame of mind for cutting through all the confusion and honing in on my core issues and purpose. It also contains the single best argument for using "sign in" rather than "login", and some great discussion of form alignment considerations. Designing the Obvious is the first book, and contains the full discussion of Hoekman's philosophy of the obvious. You could probably get a web design job on the basis of studying this book alone! My only slight qualm is that while it presented a methodology and process for requirements analysis for example, it doesn't really give you a glimpse of other established practices and advice on how to harmonize in a larger and more diverse team situation. This may sound like sacrilege, but I find these books even better than Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think. Krug's book is great in its own right, but I feel that Hoekman has taken the art one step further. I'm sure he would agree with Isaac Newton: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.. But there's no doubt Don't Make Me Think has some great advice. Some of my favourites: Don't use a mission statement as a Welcome blurb (aargh!!) Usability testing on a budget. Spend one morning a month with a few testers. Debrief immediately over lunch. Act. Mad magazine parody of the NYT tagline: All the News That Fits, We Print..

The Final Solution

Uncommon Sense: Out of the box thinking for an in the box world

Peter Cochrane's Uncommon Sense is an interesting collection of opinion pieces taken from his silicom.com blog through to around 2004. While you can read much of the material (and catch later articles) in his blog archives, the book does enhance the content will a liberal scattering of charts and also some additional commentary. Some of the topics are evergreen, such as the failures of the education system, and the gap that often exists between the actual and the perceived in conventional wisdom. Some are specific to a point in time, like his pre-occupation with the 3G bandwidth auction debacle. Certainly worth grabbing a copy for a thought provoking read, and ample encouragement to add his blog to my reader for continued entertainment. Cochrane also has a nice practice of introducing many of his articles with a related quote. One of my favourites is from Douglas Adams: Technology is the name we give to stuff that doesn't work properly yet.