On fire and slumps

When I left New York for California a week ago I was emerging from one of the most productive development spurts I'd ever had. I didn't know it then but I was about to enter a slump. Since leaving and returning I haven't gotten very much work done at all. I've tried all kinds of tricks to get myself back in gear, but none have worked.

That's Dave Winer.

You frequently hear about a basketball player being red-hot, or a baseball player going into a slump.  How about programmers?

Weird in a way.  After all, it's your brain, just focus it.  Seems pretty simple.

Lately, I've been in a strong productive swing, and feeling great about it.  Part of it is being on a good project.  But I definitely feel it's more than that.  Things just seem to happen.  I sit down to the work and
start drumming out stuff, without even feeling like I'm working.  To some degree, I can't take credit for that.

In the past, I've had some long stretches where every move is a chore.  I had to constantly remind myself to stay focused, purposefully remove all distractions.  Even then, I had to battle the temptations to cut corners (not always successfully).

I didn't realize it, but apparently I was in a slump.

And for the times when things go well, SportsCenter would call that being "en fuego".

The Change Delta

The change delta comes from Getting Things Done When You Are Not in Charge.  I like that delta is the symbol for change, so that makes it easy to remember. 

Any successful attempt at change requires a deep understanding of both what is and what might be.  Interested parties consists of those who want to hinder the process as much as those who want to help. 

At the center is you -- which might be a foreign way of thinking about it. You have a key role to play.  Perhaps the key role.  That's for you to decide.

You might have feet-on-the-ground deep knowledge.  Or, you might be an impartial outside observer.  You frequently hear people use both positions to argue that they can drive the change or help.  Either way, your understanding of these three points is unique.

All this assumes your interest in change lies deeper than merely complaining about the current state of things or dreaming wistfully about possibly futures.

The real argument against outsourcing

It's clear to me there are only two paths.  One path is to take every repetitive, by-the-book task in your organization and outsource it or mechanize it.  The other path is to take every repetitive, by-the-book task in your organization and give the people who do that task the freedom, the incentive, and yes, the imperative to do something that cannot be outsourced.
Either what you're doing is repetitive, in which case you ought to outsource it, or it's homemade, insightful, and filled with initiative and judgement, in which case you can charge for it.

-- Seth Godin, Meatball Sundae:

Of course, this is only an argument against outsourcing if the organization distributes the power, and everyone runs with it.  Many organizations can't imagine such a scenario and hire people who wouldn't know how to respond.

Minimum job requirements

Today I noticed that a project manager who sits near me never got up from his seat, never had any meetings, never discussed anything with the developers or the business analysts.

Even though he appeared to be working -- didn't notice any web surfing on the occasions when I walked by, seemed to be doing some spreadsheets and paperwork -- I would say he flunked the minimum requirements for his job.  Almost all jobs require personal interaction, except maybe the most basic programmer on a really heavy coding day.  Senior coders, managers, and certainly project managers should spend their time mostly on personal interaction on most days.

What I think this project manager did today was spend the day using tools to communicate.  Chat, email, documents.  All good stuff, but they're the supplement, the seasoning, not the meat.

We sometimes fall in love with the tools.  They make our lives so easy.

Major, major mistake.

Jonah Lehrer talks about how doctors who use MRIs to diagnose back pain do a much worse job than doctors who don't.  They start seeing things in their scans and draw conclusions that their training and common sense would contradict.

On a project that a colleague was on, he would get informed of his assignments through the issue tracking system, which was Jira.  When he transferred to the project, he actually got an assignment from Jira before his project manager ever contacted him.  I never found out who his manager was, because he would always reply "Jira" when I asked him.

Collaboration tools make a big difference and in fact are essential to a well-run project, but you can end up with too much use of them.  They keep the cranks turning, but they don't ultimately deliver anything. 

On the other hand, you can never have enough personal attention -- your personal touch, your time and involvement face-to-face or at least on the phone.  Fostering team identity, motivation, confidence, priority / urgency, appreciation.  These and many other things can only be done personally.

Discipline takes discipline

Sometimes, the only thing that gets you through what you need to do is discipline.  Reasons why you can't do it, lack of confidence, low energy, environment distractions, personal disruptions, and simple procrastination bombard you at various times, and at particularly bad moments, all at once.

In times like that, you have to rely on your discipline.  The catch is, you don't even realize you're relying on it. 

It's similar to how the extra muscles you've developed in your arms helps you avoid back strain, even though you don't think about it.  You build those arm muscles slowly, never sure when you'll reap the benefits, but something heavy always comes along.

The important things you do regularly because they need to be done, or they help you bring order to your chaos -- you'll rely on them to maintain during bad times.  Every time you do them when you don't really need to, while things are going okay, you're building your discipline.  You slowly build your ability to act, despite any obstacles, and you'll be ready when bad times come along, as they always do.

Increase your productivity!

The ultimate productivity blog. Perfect for a Friday before a 3 day weekend, especially for those of us who have to work on Monday.

Crucial characteristics

Crucial Conversations provides some useful guidelines for communication in difficult situations. You can enjoyably read the book in about an hour or two, so that makes it easy to recommend.

This comment struck me:

The more you care about an issue, the less likely you are to be on your best behavior... When it comes to our strongest views, passion can be our enemy. Of course, feeling strongly about something isn't bad in and of itself. It's okay to have strong opinions. The problem comes when we try to express them.

People want to hire only passionate people these days. And for projects with a very clear destination and fairly well understood obstacles, passionate people will drive it to completion exactly as you'd want. Nothing will stop their forward push.

But what if the goals are vague, or constantly shifting? What if you expect numerous detours and re-starts along the way? What if the challenges can't be driven through, but have to be innovated around?

Projects like that might very well be better served by good listeners, or by people who can step back and let things simmer a bit, away from the fire. Of course, passionate people can be excellent listeners, and can be wise enough to be able to let things develop in due time. But, in terms of priority -- what leading characteristics you particularly seek for the project -- passion might rank pretty low.

As the author points out, passion often acts as a source of ineffectiveness, when everyone else is not "on board". And you would most expect to see this variety of opinion on projects with vague goals and unforeseen detours.

The thing is, don't most projects fall in this category?

Don't let the uncertainties stop you

I might agree with just about everything Johanna Rothman has to say about the Big Agile Survey, such as:

Surveys about any practices without considering the industry, the products, and the management don’t tell you much. People lie to themselves about what they are really doing.

but I still think it's a good idea. I'm sure Jurgen will get the most benefit, so that's point 1. Point 2 is it doesn't really harm anyone. Point 3 is that things that might benefit you a lot and don't hurt anyone else are worth trying at least once. He might get some interesting insights into the Agile market. At worst, he'll learn something about running surveys.

Some things should be implemented with extreme care and well-understood benefits. Much of software development falls in this category. But most things in life don't, and that includes everything that happens on a blog.