The Experiment Canvas is a simple means of planning, tracking, and responding to your experiments.
Simple Things
When I say simple, I don’t necessarily mean easy. And I certainly do not mean crude in form or incomplete. Simple indicates something that does not have superfluous parts or multiple responsibilities, is easy to understand, is as independent from the rest of the solution as possible, and meets a need as is.
Simple may not address all use cases, but it does address some use cases.
Over the past several years, as I’ve been helping teams and organizations improve their ability to deliver software products that are desirable, viable, and feasible, I have been experimenting with a Behavior Framework that has proven to be rather effective. And I’d like to share it with you in hopes that you find it useful and that you provide me feedback on your experiences with it.
My plan is to write a series of blog posts all related to the behaviors framework. Some of them will be about a specific behavior. Some of them will be about tools or techniques that help teams express one or more of the behaviors. Some of them will be my own experiences. And some will be damn near complete fiction.
I read an article today that was posted on LinkedIn. I'm not going to link to the article. I'm not going to tell you who wrote it. I am only telling you about the article to set the stage for what I want to write about in this quick post.
In the article, along with "taking the best from Waterfall and Agile" and mixing them together into a "perfect methodology", the author, as a self-proclaimed change agent, suggested you should force implement all CMMI Level 5 developer practices at once.
It is not only the things we reward that shape culture, but the things we allow. Perhaps the easiest way to shape a culture is to do nothing at all.
When a rockstar employee yells at, denigrates, or refuses to help teammates and you let it slide because the rockstar is valuable, you are shaping a culture. When a teammate tells a racist or sexist joke and you say nothing because nobody present is a member of the target group, you are shaping a culture. When an executive abuses power, when a coworker engages in gossip, when a team cuts corners to make deadlines and you decide it isn't your problem, you are shaping a culture.
This is a quick post, following up on a tweet from a little while back:
"Unit testing is for code coverage like exercise is for weight loss. You're actually missing the point."
A great number of people in the software field appear to think the primary benefit of unit tests is test coverage. Some even talk about them as if they were one and the same. "No need for more unit tests, we have plenty of coverage already."
I've long had an aversion to the phrase "Best Practices". As I started out writing software, I looked to my mentors and industry leaders to inform my decisions about how things should be done. If they shared their "Best Practices", I took them to heart. I wanted to be the best coder I could possibly be.
It was 1983 and I was in science class when I first heard the term entropy.
I don't recall if we were discussing energy conversion, heat as waste, or some other topic wherein entropy plays a part, but I do recall how profound the concept of entropy seemed to me. The notion that there was a lack of order, a lack of predictability, and a gradual decline into disorder resonated with me deeply.
I read a post recently from teknophyl entitled "Motivating the Unmotivated". He asked me to read it and give him some feedback. I started a reply in the comments and realized this one was going to take some time.
I encourage you to read his blog entry. I am willing to bet it will resonate with most of you, either as a participant in a similar series of events, or at least as a witness.
