less code, more software

It was a pleasure and an honour to speak at the first Atlantec conference held in Galway, Ireland on May 15th. I talked about cyber-dojo and showed some statistics from a random sample of its 30,000+ cyber-dojos, together with a few examples of code/tests typically submitted, a few dashboard patterns, and wrapped up linking testing to Le Chatelier's Law and some of my favourite Systems Thinking quotes from Bradford Keeney.

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is an excellent book by Richard Farson, subtitled Paradoxes in Leadership (isbn 0-684-83044-2). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

The more important a relationship, the less skill matters.

Any technique loses its power when it becomes evident that it is a technique.

People need to know they are dealing with a genuine person, not someone who is "managing" them.

It is only when the balance of power is relatively equal that truly candid communication can and should take place.

When we really listen, so that we understand the other person's perspective, we risk being changed ourselves.

Every management act in some way redistributes or reinforces power.

Ex-convicts are better able to rehabilitate prison inmates than is the prison staff. Ex-drug addicts are more successful in getting other addicts off drugs than are psychiatrists. Students learn more from each other than they do from their professors.

The introduction of highly participative systems tends to bring attacks on the stronger members, often the leaders, while more hierarchical systems bring attacks on the weaker members.

The way to judge your effectiveness is to assess the quality of the discontent you engender.

Scale is the enemy of creativity... Only prisons housing fewer than twenty inmates are likely to be rehabilitative.

The big change... held; the little ones have been much easier to resist.

We learn not from our failures but from our successes - and the failures of others.

By and large, organizations are simply not good at changing themselves. They change more often as a result of invasion from the outside or rebellion from the inside, less so as a result of planning.

Planning may not be effective at assessing the future, but it can be a good way to assess the present.

Strengths and weaknesses come dressed in the same clothing.

Children look at things we turn away from. Sometimes just pointing at what is going on is a valuable way to break through a barrier.

When people feel responsible for handling some situation in which they are, in fact, largely helpless, a dangerous combination of feelings is created: responsibility plus helplessness leads to abuse.

Training makes people more alike... Education... tends to make people different from each other.

is the title of an excellent book by Tom DeMarco. This second snippet (here's the first) continues my tactic of rereading good books several times. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

Talented managers are ... all sense organ, constantly attuned to the effect their leadership is having on their people ... Managers without such talent find themselves relying on formulas and "principles" of management. They reason, "This thing I'm trying to do should work; the fact that it isn't working probably suggests that I'm doing it half-heartedly." And so they do more of whatever they've been doing.

When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It makes the work harder, not easier.

In my experience, standard processes for knowledge work are almost always empty at their center.

The power you've granted is the power to err. If that person messes up, you take the consequences. Looked at from the opposite perspective, it is this capacity to injure the person above you that makes empowerment work.

When there is neither time nor staff to cope with work that runs more slowly than expected, then the cost of lateness is paid out of quality. There is no other degree of freedom.

... voluminous documentation of everything that will hold still for it.

Successful change can only come about in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for... the organization's culture... If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change. When there is no defining vision, the only way the organization can define itself is its stasis.

is an excellent book by George Leonard (isbn 0-452-26756-0). As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

You have to be willing to spend most of your time on a plateau, to keep practising even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

Our hyped-up consumerist society is engaged, in fact, in an all-out war on mastery.

Sometimes, when the moment came to go to class, I would be feeling particularly lazy. On those occasions I would be tempted to do almost anything rather than face myself once again on the mat.

Practice, the path of mastery, exists only in the present.

To see the teacher clearly, look at the students… The best teacher generally strives to point out what the student is doing right at least as frequently as what she or he is doing wrong.

A doctor practises medicine and an attorney practises law, each each of them also has a practice.

The master of any game is generally a master of practice.

The courage of a master is measured by his or her willingness to surrender. This means surrendering to your teacher and to the demands of your discipline. It also means surrendering your own hard-won proficiency from time to time in order to reach a higher or different level of proficiency.

The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.

For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.

It can be argued that what is most abstract is most fundamental and often most persistent over time.

Those we know as masters are dedicated to the fundamentals of their calling. They are zealots of practice, connoisseurs of the small, incremental step. At the same time - and here's the paradox - these people, these masters, are precisely the ones who are likely to challenge previous limits.

is the title of a fantastic book by Tom De Marco and Tim Lister. As usual I'm going to quote from a few pages:

If you find yourself concentrating on the technology rather than the sociology, you're like the vaudeville character who loses his keys on a dark street and looks for them on the adjacent street because, as he explains, "The light is better there."

The decision to apply schedule pressure to a project needs to be made in much the same way you decide whether or not to punish your child.

Easy non-solutions are often more attractive than hard solutions.

Our boss came in and asked, "Wendl! What are you doing?" Wendl said, "I'm thinking." And the boss said, "Can't you do that at home?"

The next time someone proudly shows you around a newly designed office, think hard about whether it's the functionality of the space that is being touted or its appearance. All too often, it's the appearance.

The need for uniformity is a sign of insecurity on the part of management.

The best organizations are not of a kind; they are more notable for their dissimilarities than for their likeness. But one thing that they all share is a preoccupation with being the best.

All you get for that extra money, he said, is better quality.

The paradox of the CMM is that process improvement is good, but process improvement programs aren't, or at least they often aren't.

What chaos is left in modern society is a precious commodity. We have to be careful to conserve it and keep the greedy few from hogging more than their share.

Visual supervision is a joke for development workers. Visual supervision is for prisoners.