Digital dystopia or salvation

There is an ad running right now on Swedish TV. It’s Einstein sitting in an armchair with his mobile, playing some kind of stupid game. ”Don’t waste your potential” is the message. I don’t remember the company who made the ad, but the picture is really strong. Thinking of my own smart kids who have a good sense of math and nature science but, too often, as soon as they get the chance, when mummy is not saying no, they choose a stupid game. For entertainment, recreation, spend time, whatever reason.

This ad make me think of them. And their intelligent friends who do the same choice.

Do their screen entertainment, gaming and random spending (wasting) of time, suck out the potential from them? I don’t know yet. They’re just 8 & 10 years old. And to be honest, do the Netflix-frenzy suck the potential out of us, adults?

I see youths with their necks in the iPads during school breaks. What will happen? In 10 years will we only have a million zombies walking around with the next generation iPads not capable of doing anything?

Next day, me and my 10 year old son are in a conversation about a ”peace making machine”. Reasoning with each other. Since Man seem not capable of solving the issues of war, starving, migration, poverty, climate disasters maybe a much more rational intelligence such as a computer could do it?

Knowing too much about computing I sense in my heart that this actually could be true.

Man is stupid. Irrational. Destructive. Egoist.
Machine is rational, logical with so far no destructive characteristics on their own.

To let go to the digital intelligence might be what’s needed to save mankind from destroying itself.  Acting rational and in a logical way there are many solutions to transport, consumption, conflicts, poverty. Man just not do them. Man lack a rational approach and that’s why we see all this misery.

I wish my kid will invent this peace making machine. I think I might be too old myself.

I wish the machine will let people keep being people, with emotions, art, love and all of that but the machine run issues such as economy, international and national politics, climate contracts and conflicts in stead of us.

The HAL experience in 2001 or War Games is less likely to happen than a machine actually being wiser than us,  when they get the power over decisions.

Then we actually might live happily ever after.. growing our own garden, raising cows & chickens for fun and delight, gone fishing.

What do you think?

 

 

 

 

 

Examples of testable requirements

In the last edition of  @TestingCircus I was yammering around testable requirements and the need for requirements people to get help from all you testers out there.  http://www.testingcircus.com/examples-of-testable-requirements/

Testing Circus is btw a great magazine! Even go back to old editions is well worth the time.

Happy ending 2013, fuck Agile and be Good

Sorry Agile about the title. I can’t figure out another way to say it. Time to ditch the concept of Agile and talk about what matters. All we want to do is Good. In projects, organizations, development, business.

I was upset by everyone, and I mean everyone (at least in the IT domain), putting ”Agile” in front of every word related to their work, to make some sort of statement. ”We need to be more agile”, ”you have to make this team agile”, ”Our organization should be more agile”, ”In agile user experience we do this”, ”to have an agile release process you need to..”, ”our marketing department is agile”..  Seriously, what do you mean really?

A friend of mine, @froderik,  suggested we just replace ”agile” with ”good” and it will become more clear.

Try that.

The Agile manifesto did something awesome more than 10 years ago, putting into words something that needed to be put into words. To put attention to something that was not good in the IT business, and could become better.

Now, the Agile manifesto seems to has served it’s purpose and it’s not enough as a guide anymore.  For instance there’s nothing in the Manifesto that says we actually should deliver stuff (product and services). 🙂 You’ll see it if you read it as another friend @NiclasReimertz reminded me of.  It’s fine. It’s just time to take a breath and take the next step on the ladder.

Nowadays, the word Agile is  used in every situation to explain something bad, or good, or middle. It doesn’t mean anything any longer. How many times have you lately heard the word ”agile” used in any kind of setting?

The Agile communities did change my professional world. With the help of Agile people I learned new methods and structures to do better team leadership & development processes and somewhat better services and products.  For these communities, Agile is now more of a brand name. People know who they are by the name. No need to change. But in all other settings Agile is obsolete.

Now, to do seriously good services and products for my customers, there are so many things that need to be considered, known and explored. Business, people, process, user experience, quality, domain, context, learning. Knowledge from the history and science of communication, psychology, engineering, learning, marketing, technology  as well as crazyness, invention, collaboration over great distances, with highly integrated and complicated or complex systems, Agile just don’t have the chance to give an answer any more. Now I just want to do Good.

I get confused and restless when hearing Agile. What do you really really want? I ask.
You want a faster release cadency?
A functioning team?
An innovative product?
A stable environment?
Happy users?
Big sales?

Tell me what you want, and I’ll try to find a Good way to do it for you.

Bye Agile, enter Good.

What direction do you need?

Some friends with a little summer house in the beatiful island of Utö, Stockholm archipelago, always invite friends to visit, to stay in one of the two small rooms or in tents. Now they plan to fix their shed down the water to make it liveable.

So they have the idea to bring all friends for a weekend to restore & fix it together with them. Great idea. But ”oh my” my first thought was. A lousy carpenter I am (maybe I don’t know haven’t tried much), anyway with no experience, I can see this crowd of friends standing there with no plan and some tools and starting to discuss where to start, who will do what.  It makes me sick thinking of it. ”I’m more than happy to help out, but please please make sure there is someone gaffer from the start who tells me exactly what to do, and get us going.

This made me think about projects in general, and software projects. A group of people coming together to fix something will for sure gonna be a drain, it there is no direction at all. They’re gonna talk for days. About what and how.

This can work I believe, if you’re really really explicit about that it’s up to the group to decide – everything – and they have easy access to the money – with a sharp deadline and with very direct, personal and visible reward and outcome from the project.

But if it’s not and you just want the shed liveable in the way you want it, and the outcome for the crowd is just ”a pizza and some beers, and maybe access a night or two in the shed during the summer”,  this is not the way to do it.

When knowing nothing about how to build a roof, to do up the windows, fix the floors, install a small kitchen, we for sure need a lot of detailed direction. ”Paint this border of the window, first clean them, with this tool” etc. This will make me productive.

If there are some people in the crowd who knows some  more, they will only need to know ”you take care of the windows, here’s the material, and some guidelines, ok!” to get anything going. Anything more detailed will get them irritated and much less productive.

Someone might be a builder, or have a lot experience from hobby projects, and all she/he will need to know is some constraints ”fix the house” – it can’t be bigger than x m/2, and have to be red, and must include some sort of kitchen area. And this guy will make it. If you give her too much constraints she will just give up ”what’d’you need me for if you know everything yourself!?”

Depending on experience, different sort of direction is needed. Please don’t expect your friends, being there over the weekend, to ”sort it out themselves”. They won’t. They will spend hours talking, discussing, who does what, what should be done, how it should look. Ending up by the rocks having a swim pretty soon..  or at the porch having a beer ”to think”.

Please assign us some roles. ”You’re in charge of the windows” is very helpful even with no experience. Knowing I’d be in charge for window, I’d make sure to gather some people around to figure out what to do. But HOW to do it? With no experience, please give me someone who can give us directions. ”You should start with..”

In software teams, compared with a bunch of friends fixing a shed, we have most often at least some experience or education. No-one is totally rookie. Therefore we start a bit ahead. Still we can’t put together a new group of mixed people expecting a great result without any sort of direction.

Is the product owner’s direction on WHAT to do, enough for software teams?

And the way many project managers, especially less experienced ones, ”direct” a software team, is that really effective? To tell more or less senior developers & team members exactly what to do and how to do it, is that really working?? Or to say ”we’re agile” and with that leave all direction?

Is the HOW so unique and changing so there is no need for any sort of technical instructions? ”You should start with…” Ever?

What level of direction do YOU want and need for yourself? To be able to fix your software shed with pride?

And have you told anyone that?
For example your project manager, CTO, team members or other managers?

Please tell us at least with a comment on this blog, if not anywhere else. 🙂

Stop starting – Start finishing (Lean Kanban Nordic 2013)

Hi!

Back to normal again?
Exhausted after 4,5 months of real planning and 2 days performing of the Stop starting – Start finishing (Lean Kanban Nordic) conference at Hilton Slussen, Stockholm

I should really be going into ”Kvinnofängelset” mode and watching bad tv-series now. But I guess I’m in the ”Whatever” zone as Henrik Kniberg stated in his finishing talk.

Too tired & inspired to write any real content now, so STOP READING.
This is just some personal things that no-one should care about. Just once I decided to save these kinds of thoughts on a blog instead on a local not-backed-up disk.

During these months of intensive planning, coordinating, email-communicating, decision-making I have many times wondered – OH WHY!?

WHY didn’t I just say NO?

I have a full time job, two little kids & husband – aka DJ on the conference Open Night, trying to do some cooking sometimes (with or without them), exercising sometimes, meeting friends sometimes, put a little time in other hobbies sometimes, reading & writing sometimes and NO TIME to add conference planning.

Now I know why.

Maybe the same reasons as all the other idealists, crazy people out there, doing all these conferences all the time, over the world.

1. There was really no choice – suddenly you’re just there with the conference date set, and you didn’t know how it happened.

2. There is some mission that you have, that is just stronger than the inbox control robot in your head.

3. Enforcing surroundings from the mates that suddenly also said YES against all their rational mind.

4. The joy you see in many eyes during the conference. Without your no-choice commitment the particular event just wouldn’t have happened.

5. The many new and old friends you have met

6. The opportunity to give away small presents to people you admire in front of a big audience.

7. The draw to keep going out of comfort zone

8. The unavoidable learning you make. By arranging a conference I felt that I was more focused and learned more from the speeches than attending. Also just by arranging the conference you learn about communication, collaboration, organization, planning, trust, emotions, people..

So, to those of you that are in the middle of planning a conference :

YOU have no choice!
And many people will love you for that.

Lots of love to all participants and speakers and DF Kompetens for the Stop starting – Start finishing conference.

And to the sponsors of Open Night, without it, it wouldn’t have been the same conference experience. Thanks Frontit, Athega, KnowIT, IRM & LeanKit!

MAYBE – I will now take up some writing on this blog again. If you find nothing here – you might find something on the SmartBear blog
 I have a hard time deciding when to publish something there or here.. private hobbies & work just doesn’t need to be separated sometimes. Such as enjoying the time with great people at #sssf13 & programme team I can’t really divide in personal or work mates anymore.

See you around!

Agile Quality and capoeira

While not being very productive at the moment on this blog, I have got some thoughts down about Agile Quality at the company blog. What is Agile Quality? And what do you think it is? I’d love to hear!

http://blog.smartbear.com/software-quality/bid/242524/Understanding-the-Term-Agile-Quality-Through-Acrobatics

 

 

Stop starting, start finishing

I feel like I’m ignoring my blog…

If anyone would care, I’m busy finishing programme set up of the conference ”Stop Starting – Start Finishing” (Lean Kanban Nordic) which will be held in Stockholm March 12-13 2013. Together with this great team – Håkan Forss (Avega), Anders Eklund (Frontit), Hermanni Hyytiälä (Reaktor Innovations) and Ketil Jensen (Leverage51) and the professional conference team at DF Kompetens.

At the moment Call for sessions is open a couple of weeks more. Don’t miss the opportunity to have a conversation with an audience of managers and others curious for next step in project , portfolio and change management.

Submit your proposal at sssf13.uservoice.com  or visit the Swedish submission info page at dfkompetens.se

Welcome!

How do you finish stuff in stead of starting more?

Open source, business and free pens

I was philosophing on Open Source and business today, thanks to a triggering article my friend Ole Lensmar, founder of SoapUI, forwarded the other day : It’s official – Open Source engines growth.

One thing that came up in my mind was how Open Source style strategy would work in another business, say pen’s

Say I run a company who designs and produces pens, of good quality, multifunctional, really nice and good pens.

One day I start to give pens away for free. To attract a great mass to my great pen.

This companies have done for ages, right..?

With the difference this time, that I keep giving them away for free. Not on a time limit.

What could I then make money from?

Obviously – amount. If one customer gets more than 10 pens, then he has to pay.

Kind of easy to work around as a pen customer I guess, but still it would mean some trouble for me as a pen user to have my friends getting pens for my company mates all the time, signing up as customers with their names and all. And they would then have spent their amount of free pens..

Or obviously – I can offer the same pen with a more cool feature, say integrated and really smooth and great designed laser pointer, for a certain price. I would probably get some paying customers that really likes that.

But what about all those tens of thousands pen users that couldn’t care less about an integrated laser pointer, and never would use such a feature? They’d stick to the free pen, and stay happy about the great bargain, right?

Well, one thing I could do so they too will give me some money so I can continue developing new great pens, is to offer some sort of convenient service for them, that makes their life easier.

Maybe a subscription? With some decent data gathering, I deliver new pens at their office door just before the moment their old pens stops working. They’d pay for the convenience of never again have to think about ordering pens.

And maybe I can offer a package with both pens and notebooks? And then they’ll give me their money. But hey, the notebooks are ALSO free. They could just go get them themselves.

But not bundled into nice packages, delivered at the door at exact the same moment I need them. For that busy people of today would pay i believe. People DON’T like shopping anymore, not in the old school sense. They don’t want to run around or browse around for hours to get the right pen and notebook.

Knowing how good my free pen is, they assume the notebook would be as great, and they’d pay to NOT HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT anymore.

Of course the notebook, HAS to be as good as expected, otherwise they just stop paying for the bundle and get the notebook somewhere else. I cannot just send whatever notebook that happened to be around. It need to be aligned with the great pen, for keeping the trust.

And probably they’d bring the subscription to their next place of work.

Probably there are thousands, or at least a decent amount, of other needs related to pen usage, buying, storing, garbaging that my company could solve for them, experts of pens that we are. Without going into pen consulting (writing stuff for them) business.

How could I get knowledge about these needs?

1. Target the buyer. Is it the users of pens, and who are they really that can influence purchasing? The office manager? The purchasing manager..? Do I need to address all, with what message, and what design? Differs from small to big companies? Get to know your customer.

2. Get to know the customers life around pens and maybe notebooks. Pay some study visits, do observations, from observations you get so much information that you probably never need to go into any interviews, and also you should get a loyal customer idea generating community.

3. Fail forward. Try business ideas, count on to throw some or many of them away. Google does this every day.

These are no new truths about business right? Business have done just this for thousands of years?

Open Source no different.

Cleaning under the stair

Every time I do gardening (in our very little garden area) I get struck by the natural flow of clean-up thinking. I don’t know how other amateur home garderners do, but it’s hard for me to think of doing it without the non-consious thinking of cleaning at the same time as putting new features (plants) on.

The other day I bought some new flowers to put in pots on our stair – our new little beautiful features you could say if you’re in system development business. To be visible for us and visitors (users I guess) as soon as you come to the stair. Also we have some sad plants that severerly needs re-planting or they’ll die or look very ugly.

Before putting them on the stair I need to do some work – that is planting the flowers in some pots with new mould.

I need just to bring out the pots and mould bag from under the stair, and Ouch!! here it looks like a mess! (Ever got that feeling when working on software??)

What to do? Ignoring the mess? Just drag out the (dirty) pots from the spider nets, close my eyes and plant my new features (flowers).

I already know what will be the consequence of that decision..  the stair will have some bad looking dirt under it and next time it will be even worse to put new features or re-plant old features (flowers) in the garden.

I do a quick calculation of risk. What IF I will now do the not so pretty work of cleaning under the stair? What could happen if I do that now?

Worst case scenario is that I start cleaning and get interupted by some unexpected event today that will make me leave the garden for some more important or social event. Will my plants survive another day without getting new pots?

Well, ONE day or maybe two they might survive. Some of them are more sensitive. I take the risk of cleaning, I know it’s worth it.

I start dragging out the stuff from under the stair, and start cleaning. Washing up the pots, brush away the dirt, hunting away a huge spider keeping my head cold since little son is watching (mummy’s not bothered by a little friendly black huge spider at all… right).

Have placed the new plants in a friendly well organized spot so they won’t fall.

And actually, the cleaning did take some work but not as bad as it looked like at the first glance. I made some decisions during the action to NOT clean exactly every garden tool, every little pot plate with water. While cleaning under the stair I could see the bikes connected to it also could need some washing up. But hell no. Stick to the scope here. The mission was to put new features (plants) on the stair and taking care of some old ones, not to fix the bikes.

Be aware of scope and mission.

Now to the plants. Quick risk calculation. I might get interrupted. With two little kids that wouldn’t be a surprise. So which of the plants could die first if they don’t get new mould?

One new one and one old one it seemed. So I start with them of course. And just them.

Start with the high risk items!

If something will happen on the way and I have to stop, at least these two will not die and the other ones will probably survive a few days.

For very harsh interruptions such as urgent long time sickness, I cannot plan. The features (plants) I guess have to die if something really bad would happen.

The first two plants get in their pots.

Next item, hmm.. which one. I’ve promised husband (stakeholder) to re-plant a sad old one with little chance of survival). I have another new one waiting. Hm..

Well, not a very complex environment – in this case it really didn’t matter that much which I chose. I went for the new one and got time to re-plant the old one  – since I already had a nice clean pot to put it in it was quite quick done.

In a complex environment I would have done some calculation, maybe a user test with my husband and son on how important the old sad one was compared to the new flowering one. They would have made the decision.

The message here is just:

In our daily lifes the effect of cleaning and prioritization is so obvious. It’s natural.

How do you think about cleaning your system stuff? Be it code, tests, requirements, documentation, storage..? Do the same natural law of risk calculating, mission focused, cleaning apply?

If you act the same way when working in the garden (or whatever item-cluttered hobby you might have) as when working with systems development how would your garden (fishing equipment, book shelf, diving gear, antique collection, whatever) look like by now?

What has European women in bikini to do with systems?

Why did I post a reflection of half naked women in my blog on systems?

It might be totally clear, still I might think it needs a comment, for readers that believe this blog should be about systems..

The thing with the for me somewhat strange behaviour of throwing all the clothes off on the beach, when half of the world’s women doesn’t seem to need to it’s just one of many examples of how many people, in this case women such as me, during long periods of time act in a way without ever thinking about why. Without ever have made their own decision about it. Without anyone even telling them to act in this certain way.

This is just another example of system culture.

Every day actions, easy to change when you just stop for a second, see alternative ways and make your own conscious decision.