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Staying Sane
Standardization is long periods of mind-numbing boredom interrupted by moments of sheer terror – Bjarne Stroustrup
In his ACCU2013 talk, “C++14 Early Thoughts“, Bjarne Stroustrup presented this slide:
By using “we” in each bullet point, Bjarne was referring to the ISO WG-1 C++ committee and the daunting challenges it faces to successfully move the language forward.
Not only do the committee leaders have to manage the external onslaught of demands from a huge, dedicated user base, they have to homogenize the internal communications amongst many smart and assertive members. To illustrate the internal management problem, Bjarne said something akin to: “There is no topic the committee isn’t willing to discuss at length for two years“.
In order to prevent being overwhelmed with work, the committee uses this set of grass roots principles to filter out the incoming chaff from the wheat:
I have no idea how internal conflicts are handled, nor how infinite loops of technical debate are exited, but since the all-volunteer committee is still functioning and doing a great job (IMO) of modernizing the language, there’s got to be some magic at work here:
Almost Yearly Apology
Every once in a blue moon, BD00’s conscience compels him to apologize to the guild of 20th century management for his non-compliant, “unacceptable“, online behavior . Here’s this year’s mild BD00 apology:
I’m really glad my conscience periodically crashes the Ackoff-Deming-Argyris-Senge-Hamel-Semler-Nayar-Hsieh anti-management party that rocks on in my brain. It gives the non-BD00 half of me the comfort of knowing that he’s not an apathetic, tunnel-visioned psychopath… errr does it?
Long Live The King!
Even though it has a title and cover design that only a Harvard MBA could love, I picked up Robert Austin’s “Measuring and Managing Performance in Organizations” on a twitter tip from Torbjörn Gyllebring. As soon as I cracked the cover, I knew it was gonna be a classic. The foreword was written by one of my all time favorite software authors, Tom DeMarco.
Mr. Austin discovered perhaps the first recorded instance of the well worn “schedule is king!” management law:
Such scenarios, in which program managers or contractors attend to measurements of timeliness of delivery to the exclusion of all else, are reported as early as 1882. In that year, the newly built U.S.S. Omaha was discovered to have onboard-coal-room for only four days’ steaming; in the rush to stay on schedule, no one had been willing to force notice of this defect at a high enough level to ensure its correction.
Since there seems to be no worthy candidate on the horizon capable of dethroning the king, expect this monarch to live long indeed.
Every once in a blue moon, I finish a book so engrossing that I immediately reread it before cracking open a different one. Mr. Austin’s MAMPIO is one of those gems and I’m well into my second romp through it. Since it’s loaded with a gazillion ideas for blog posts, expect more over-the-top BD00 distortions to come. W00t!
My Mad Surgeon!!!
Hah! After having survived a recent minor surgical procedure, I just had to LMAO when I saw this ghastly pic of my surgeon(!!!!!) in a recent Fast Company article:
Impedance Mismatch
The anecdotal evidence is overwhelming. Agile methods can work really well for many small teams and small projects. However, no matter what the expert, high-profile, “coaches” purport, the jury is still out regarding its scalability to large teams and large projects. In “How even agile development couldn’t keep this mega-project on track“, Nick Heath showcases the British disaster known as the £2.4bn “Universal Credit Programme“.
First, the sad fact:
…the UK government has had to write off at least £34m on the programme and delay the national launch for the project. The department in charge of the project, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), can’t guarantee the remainder of the £303m it has spent on the project so far will offer “good value” it said.
From the rest of Nick’s story, it becomes clear that agile methods weren’t really used to develop the software:
There was a two-year gap between the DWP starting the project design and build process, and the system going live in 2013.
The DWP experienced problems incorporating the agile approach into existing contracts, governance and assurance structures.
That second point is key. No matter how much a big org wants to be “agile“, it is heavily constrained by the hierarchical structures, stature-obsessed mindsets, byzantine processes, and form-filled procedures entrenched within not only itself, but also within its suppliers and customers. It’s a classic “system” problem where futzing around with one component may crash the whole system because of hardened interfaces and skin tight coupling.
As the figure below shows, attempting to “agilize” a large component within an even larger, waterfall-centric, system creates impedance mismatches at every interface. The greater the mismatch, the less productive the system becomes. Information flow and understanding between components bog down while noise and distortion overwhelm the communication channels. In the worse case, the system stops producing value-added output and it would have been better to leave the old, inefficient, waterfall-centric system intact.
The only chance an agile-wanna-be component has at decoupling itself from the external waterfall insanity is to covertly setup a two-faced, agile<->waterfall protocol converter for each of its external interfaces. Good luck pullin’ that stunt off.
Same Old, Same Old
After stumbling across this announcement, “Navy orders Raytheon to stop work on next-gen radar“, I just had to laugh. It’s the same old, same old “iterative” process:
- The Department of Defense issues a request for proposals.
- The usual suspects (Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrup Grumman, etc) submit bids.
- A winner is selected – Yay!
- The sore loser(s) protest the decision.
- By law, the decision must be revisited and re-evaluated.
- The decision is either upheld, or a new winner is selected.
- If a new winner is selected, the previous winner protests.
I’ve worked in the aerospace and defense industry for 30+ years and I’ve seen this dysfunctional, time and money wasting, game play over and over like clockwork. Tick tock, tick tock.
Sometimes the bid-win-protest cycle goes on for years and it takes longer for the hundreds of bureaucrats, lobbyists, committees, and politicians to resolve the dilemma than for the eventual winner to actually build the system. In addition, after all the political shenanigans have played out and the ultimate winner starts the ball rolling, the contract is sometimes cancelled in midstream after millions of dollars and engineering hours have been spent.
Despite repeated calls for procurement/acquisition process reform, the system is so big and there are so many intertwined players that any substantive change is virtually impossible. But hey, it’s taxpayer money. No problemo.
The System Always Fights Back – John Gall
POTM Has Landed
You are in the future. You were sent by a magical wormhole as you entered the elevator, What do you see? The remains of your company, destroyed… The only clue to what happened? An organizational chart where all boxes read: “Manager”. They’ve finally done it, they’ve destroyed the company by turning everybody into a manager – Random Manager
It took forever, but I finally received my POTM T-shirt from my Germany-based e-friend, Vasco Duarte (@duarte_vasco). W00t!
You can get your very own copy of the POTM masterpiece here: POTM T-Shirt.
Nice Hat!
Checkout what BD00 wore for halloween this year:
It was fun being wheeled around the neighborhood in my fake hospital bed. I got tons o’ candy from many compassionate people. Plus, some kind soul set up a paypal account to help pay for my treatment. Contributions are streaming in from around the globe. W00t! and Ka-ching!!!!
Frightful And Sugarful
Boo!!!!!! King Morrie and his serf BD00 wish you all a very frightful and sugarful Halloween. Moo Hah Hah!
Creative Writing Challenge
I’ve probably made the request before, but it’s time to make it again. Given an arbitrary graphic to kindle your imagination, write and share an accompanying story that gives it some kind of meaning to you.
Are you ready? Here’s the picture I’ve randomly poached from my archives for you to bring to life:
So, what are you waiting for, dear reader? Don’t be shy. Give it a go and submit your Pulitzer prize candidate in the comments section. There’s a free BD00 FAI T-shirt (sorry, X-Large only) in the offing to the winner – if you actually want one. 🙂
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