Tag: mindset

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Key Skills for Software Development

If you understand how these things relate to software development work, then you require no training or coaching.

Self-discipline

Handling stress and working with others requires self-awareness and emotional control. All the skills listed here also require self-awareness and emotional control.

Learning How to Learn

It is widely agreed that software development teams are either improving mindfully, or they are deteriorating in their effectiveness. There is no steady state. To make improvement possible, team members must be open to learning new things and willing to question things they already know.

Focus

To achieve anything, you must focus on it. That means uninterrupted time to think and work. It means finishing one thing before starting another. It means not getting distracted. It means keeping your eyes on the goal and not on dwelling on the difficulties.

Persistence

Overcoming challenges and meeting objectives requires persistence. Embracing change to improve our work requires persistence.

Collaboration

In almost all cases, software development work benefits from collaboration between two or more people. “The more you share, the more your bowl will be plentiful.” – James S.A. Corey, The Expanse.

Trust

Effective collaboration requires trust and the courage to be seen as vulnerable or imperfect.

Leadership

Leadership doesn’t mean giving orders. It means giving credit, giving time, giving space, giving encouragement, giving opportunity, giving trust. The more you give, the more you get.

Rhythm

A steady, predictable, consistent, and sustainable pace of work helps ensure continuous flow, maximize delivery effectiveness, and minimize team stress.

Technical Skills

The field of software is constantly changing. Software architecture, design patterns, programming paradigms, methods and schools of testing, of analysis, and other areas, design principles, development practices, automation, operations, and everything else is a moving target. To get started in this field, you need basic education/training in analysis, programming, and testing, and the non-technical skills listed above so that you will have the ability to keep yourself current with technical advances and to collaborate with and learn from your colleagues.

Without the basic training, you will have no foundation to build on. It would be like trying to run a foot race on top of loose ice floes on water. The general discussion of what skills are necessary tends to emphasize the non-technical side of things; don’t take that to mean there are short-cuts on the technical side. The reason for the emphasis is that the non-technical skills have been underappreciated in the past. On the other hand, don’t worry if you feel as if there’s too much to learn. Once you have the basics, you can build on that knowledge little by little.

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Scrum as a belief system

I came across a post by Damian Synadinos, dating from August 2017, entitled Thinking about Beliefs. He explores the idea of belief systems; how they come to be, how people interpret them, how adopters implement them, various things that can go right or wrong when people apply them, and what can happen when we question our belief systems.

After presenting a general model of belief systems, Damian goes on to illustrate his ideas by describing how he set out to question his beliefs regarding software testing; that is, his belief system around his work. He discovered that some of his previously-held beliefs about software testing seemed sound while others had room for improvement, once he began to question them systematically.

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Where Agile goes to die

There’s something I started to notice around 2011, but didn’t quite understand until recently. Now I think I have a handle on it.

From time to time I hear agile coaches describe a particular client company as a place where agile thinking never penetrates, or where agile methods are never properly adopted. It seems as if most of the larger markets have at least one such company or governmental organization.

One (that I know of) is known in its local market as “the place where agile goes to die.” Coaches in other markets have been less poetical in their descriptions, but many of them are aware of at least one client company that has a similar local reputation.

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What’s the problem with “What’s the problem with Scrum?”

I’m not a salesman for, or even much of an enthusiast for Scrum, and yet I keep finding myself in the position of defending it (or appearing to do so). A survey was posted a few weeks ago entitled “What’s the Problem with Scrum, and How can we Fix it?” (capitalization theirs). They’ve published the results, and so here I am again, appearing to defend Scrum.

What I’m actually defending is the idea that if we want to criticize a thing, that at least let’s criticize what the thing really is, and not a strawman version of it.

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Beyond resistance

Do people resist change? The consensus appears to be that they do.

Well, with all that consensus floating around, I guess resistance to change must be a Thing. It’s hard to argue with a million articles that all say the same things.

On the other hand…not everyone sees it that way.

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Billy Pilgrim and the software estimation debate

Warnings:

  • tl;dr
  • sarcasm
  • calories from fat: (don’t ask)

I’d like to begin with an insightful quote. Until I find one, here’s a quote from Vonnegut:

“I am a Tralfamadorian, seeing all time as you might see a stretch of the Rocky Mountains. All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.”
— Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, Chapter 4 (Kurt Vonnegut)

The online debate about software estimation may well be the greatest waste of pixels since the invention of porn. Like porn, the debate comprises a never-ending repetition of the same scene over and over again, the very definition of “boring.” And the actors conclude each day in the same state they were in when they awoke. Every day the same, every day exhausting, every day pointless.

The argument, like Kenny of Southpark, refuses to die. It wakes up each morning as if nothing has happened. In a sense, I guess, nothing has.

Anyway, here’s the thing: Despite people’s best efforts and their protestations to the contrary, no one can predict the future accurately and precisely.

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Julio Cortázar and software development methods

Nadie habrá dejado de observar que con frecuencia marcos del proceso se aplican mecánicamente.

Maybe Julio Cortázar, whose 100th birthday we celebrate this year, would have begun a set of instructions for implementing a process framework with similar words. No one will have failed to observe that many individuals, teams, and organizations are quite befuddled by the process framework they are trying to use. They struggle mightily to follow every “rule” the framework “requires,” even when their goals are ill served by those rules.

Indeed, it is typical for such individuals, teams, and organizations to lose sight of their original goals altogether in their attempts to satisfy the real or perceived “rules” of the process framework. No matter how haphazard their previous mode of work may have been, many conclude that the framework “doesn’t work,” and revert to their former methods.

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Don’t do anything stupid on purpose

It’s a familiar adage among engineers, often posted in work areas. Does it pertain to software development? The seemingly endless circular debates about software delivery methods lead me to think so. The latest chapter in the ongoing drama is the recent schism between Lean Kanban University’s flavor of Kanban Method and the rest of the lean/kanban community. And the paint hasn’t yet dried on the sumo match between Kanban and Scrum. A few years ago (mid-00’s, as memory serves) the same debate (except for the names of the methods) raged between proponents of Evolutionary Project Management (Evo) and Extreme Programming (XP). Prior to that, we kept ourselves entertained by debating whether RUP was Agile. Before we could do that, we had to settle the debate about the relative merits of Spiral and RUP, of course. And Spiral vs. linear SDLC processes. Tomorrow, next week, or next month, it will be something else. Important questions, all.

Yet, I can’t help noticing, as Ron Jeffries puts it, it’s all the same elephant. When I stopped arguing and started listening to the elephant, I heard it say "Don’t do anything stupid on purpose." What does the phrase mean in the context of software development and delivery? To explore the question, I think it would be helpful to define the terms stupid and on purpose for that context. Continue reading Don’t do anything stupid on purpose

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The Shimmering

In the movie, Now You See Me, a certain idea was stated multiple times, phrased in various ways: "Look closely, because the closer you think you are, the less you will see." In the past decade, a lot of people have been inching closer and closer to something called "agile," and most of them are pretty sure they can see it.

Things are very different on each side of the "hump" in the diffusion of innovations curve. On the left side, the early side, where the Innovators and Early Majority adopters live, people tend to be forward-looking, open-minded, imaginative, proactive, and willing to take risks. On the right side, the late side, where the Late Majority adopters and Laggards live…well, not so much. Some people are interested in the left side, because that’s where breakthrough ideas are vetted in the proverbial fire of the (possibly over-rated) Real World. Others are interested in the right side, because that’s where methods and practices become scaled, integrated, and institutionalized to support large enterprises. Continue reading The Shimmering