George Dinwiddie’s blog

David Maister asks, in a business turndown, do you respond with cost-cutting measures, such as layoffs of junior personnel, or do you reduce the profitability at the top, redirecting the efforts of your top people to long-term growth while the junior people attend to the reduced amount of immediate work? As he says,

As always, I have to stress that this is not a moral issue but one of pragmatics.

As I read through the comments on this post, I came across one that noted this was a case of

The classic fight between short-term “success” and long-term prosperity.

Suddenly I was struck by the parallels between this dilemma faced by business owners and those faced by software developers. (Continued)

It is good when we learn from our experiences–much better than when we don’t learn from them. I recently wrote about learning, or failing to learn, from observing others. A recent discussion on the scrumdevelopment yahoogroup got me thinking about another way to learn from experiences, and that’s learning from the experiences of others.

The discussion I mean started in the middle of another thread, when Clay Dreslough asked about Pair Programming.

But I have never had any success with actual Pair Programming.

So … am I missing a key component of XP? Or have other people found the same reticence with adopting Pair Programming?

Are there some valuable gains here that I’m missing? And if so, how would you recommend getting programmers to change their habits? (Continued)

A while back, I was working with a young and cocky software developer. He was a smart guy, and sure of his abilities. He had seven years of Java experience, he said, and he knew how to write code.

As he was a new member of the team, I described the strategy I’d planned for a bit of code. I showed him what I’d already written, and asked him to complete the functionality.

“But I can do it another way.” And he described a different technique. (Continued)

Some of you may remember that I started a house construction project. Things are moving very fast, now, and the actual construction may take less time than it took to get all the necessary permits. So far, the project’s about 100% over the time budget. And people say that software development should be more like the construction industry!

But the fact that the construction has run slower than expected is not the reason for this post. Neither is the fact that this project has been consuming a large portion of my attention, and hindering posts on this blog.

This post is about an example of refactoring found in the house construction domain. (Continued)

Sometimes people just won’t do what you want them to do—what they should do—no matter how hard you try to persuade them. Why is that? (Continued)

There’s a thread on the Extremeprogramming yahoogroup attempting to define Agile. John Roth started this thread with a trial balloon of ways to recognize an Agile project from easily observed practices. I have a bit of difficulty with this definition; I think that it’s too prescriptive and, while it could be a useful heuristic, would miss the mark in numerous cases. To my mind, it doesn’t zero in on the heart of Agile practice.

So what is the heart of Agile practice? In the ensuing discussion, Dale Emery posts a message the turns attention to feedback.

The whole team focuses intensely on producing accurate, relevant, timely feedback about product, project, and process.

I’ve written about the importance of feedback, before. Using feedback is not the defining aspect of Agile, of course. Using feedback is the basic mechanism for any control system. (Continued)

I’ve always been of the opinion that software construction is not like physical construction. Or, rather, that the construction part, analogous to hammering two-by-fours together when building a house, is running the compiler. And, of course, you rarely tear a house down and rebuild it over and over, until you get it right. Therefore, software development is nothing like mechanical construction.

Except, of course, when it’s very much like mechanical construction.
(Continued)

A Steering manager uses the Law of Diminishing Response as a guide to successful control interventions. When you consider adding some pressure, the key variable to monitor is not people’s performance, but their responsiveness. How are they responding to the existing pressures? When they hear of a new “challenge,” do they drop their head a quarter of an inch and mumble an acceptance under their breath? Do they become annoyed and give a hundred reasons why it can’t be done? Do they show external signs of panic? These are all signs that they’ve reached the point where responsiveness has gone negative, yet they are unable to control their own response.

On the other hand, are people alert and genuinely enthusiastic, able to ask penetrating questions that need answering before accepting the extra work? Can they consciously trade off less important work for high-priority assignments? These are signs that their responsiveness is still above zero, so it’s okay to pile a little more fuel on the fire; but don’t make any assumptions about next time.

Jerry Weinberg, Quality Software Management: Systems Thinking

Last month, Dmitri Zimine posted a small rant against context switching. (Continued)

It’s stabilizing feedback that keeps a simple amplifier working as an amplifier, rather than pegging the output at the maximum positive or negative voltage. The feedback mechanism observes the output and applies a small correction to the input to counteract overreactions. Because the feedback is swift, only a small correction is needed. In fact, if the feedback were delayed, the output would tend to swing back and forth, oscillating around the desired value.

In iterative software development, we use feedback to keep the project on task. Feedback from our unit tests lets us know if our code does what we intend. Feedback from our acceptance tests lets us know if our code does what the Customer wants. What could possibly go wrong? (Continued)