A Couple of Tips on Bad Parenting

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1. Give your son a fashionable name like Tanner, Braden or Travis. You can handicap a child for life with a goofy name. You can give him a sorry start from which he’ll never recover. By the way, you know what’s a good name? Paul. Paul is a name that’s stood the test of time. It dates back to the Bible . . .

Tanner is not even a name. Braden is not a name. Travis is a name, but it’s a hillbilly name, like Zeke. If you’re tempted to name your boy Travis, go ahead and name him Zeke.

2. Use up your moral authority on things of no importance. I was in Subway this afternoon and heard a man telling his kids, “No soda. You’ve had too much soda lately.” It turns out by soda, he meant cola, because he let the kids fill up their drinks with a mixture of Sprite and Hi-C.

First of all, cola is not bad for kids, certainly no worse than Sprite or Hi-C. I drank about four colas a day as a kid — still do, although now I occasionally pour some rum or bourbon in them, which I don’t recommend for the kiddies. As for Hi-C, I’d rather drink water from the sewer.

Second point: it’s micromanagement. Nobody, including your own child — especially your own child — wants to listen to you tell them what to do every minute. They’re going to tune you out. So by the time you finish telling them what to drink, what to eat, what to wear, and get around to something important, nobody’s listening anymore . . .

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The Agile Elevator Speech

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You begin by stating that agile is basically three things: a set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, a project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, and a leadership philosophy that encourages team work and accountability.

You go on to say that success in today’s economy requires us to respond quickly to changing market conditions. Agile processes allow our teams to meet the changing demands of their customers while creating environments where top developers want to work.

— Agile Chronicles: “The Agile Elevator Speech”

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Gathering Requirements

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The most common verb associated with requirements is “gather.” Yet most requirements that end up fulfilled in a system aren’t gathered. Yes, I know, there are always a few requirements that are so obvious in a new system that you can “gather” them from stakeholders, but gathering implies that the requirements are already out there, fully formed and fully understood, and ready for harvest. It just doesn’t work that way. No stakeholder ever says to an analyst, “Requirements? Why, yes, I have eleven requirements. Eight are functional, one is a usability requirement, and the other two are operational requirements. Are you collecting constraints now, as well? I have three of those. Please sit down, and I will elucidate perfectly clearly on each and every one in turn.” Most requirements are discovered–or invented. Many are transformed or compromised along the way.

Most stakeholders don’t consider the underlying requirements of their work; they do their work. They are not in the business of reinventing the work. The arrival of a new project is the point in time when the ideas for new possible ways of doing work force us to consider the underlying requirements. If you go to an experienced front-desk hotel employee and ask what requirements there are for the check-in process, you are most likely to hear in excruciating detail exactly how the check-in procedure works today. Indeed, you will probably hear more than just about check-in; you will hear about the reservation procedure and how it impacts the check-in procedure. It never crossed the mind of that employee to consider what information and material goods the hotel needs in order for a guest to do self check-in with a new automated system. And the idea of the guest selecting a room from all those available is a shock. It’s not done that way!

This is why we have folks with “analyst” in their titles. Analysis is never simply about recording requirements from clients and other stakeholders. Analysts are not waiters who take orders without comment. Analysts need to learn how to tease out the basic rules–the policies–of the system and liberate all stakeholders from thinking that the new system should be based on current procedures. It is invention that is at the heart of analysis, not gathering.

— Tim Lister

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Honor Roll

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My son made the honor roll his first semester in high school. I’m very proud of him. He’s in a competitive (translation: high percentage of Asian kids) high school and he’s taking honors classes, where every kid thinks they should get an A but there aren’t enough A’s to go around.

An email went out to parents listing the Honor Roll kids. There are a lot of kids on the Honor Roll at this school.

They should send out a list of the kids who didn’t make the Honor Roll. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would teach the kids a good lesson: Work hard or be humiliated.

Another idea: Only kids taking honors classes would be eligible for the Honor Roll. All other kids would be eligible for the “Honor” (insert finger-quotes here) Roll.

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EppsNet Labs: Glider

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Here’s a really simple gliding tabs demo using glider.js, which is downloadable here.

As you can see from the really simple code below, you could do something pretty nice with this without too much extra effort.

Glider is dependent on the Prototype and Scriptaculous libraries, both of which are included in the glider download, as is the required stylesheet.


<script src="javascripts/prototype.js"></script>
 
<script src="javascripts/effects.js"></script> 

<script src="javascripts/glider.js"></script>
<div id="glider">
<div class="controls"><a href="#tab1">Tab 1</a> |
<a href="#tab2">Tab 2</a> |
<a href="#tab3">Tab 3</a> |
<a href="#tab4">Tab 4</a></div>
<div class="scroller">
<div class="content">
<div id="tab1" class="section">Tab 1</div>
<div id="tab2" class="section">Tab 2</div>
<div id="tab3" class="section">Tab 3</div>
<div id="tab4" class="section">Tab 4</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>

<script type="text/javascript">// <!&#91;CDATA&#91;
    new Glider( 'glider', { duration:0.5 } );
// &#93;&#93;></script>

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Early Shift at Starbucks

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Starbucks cup

I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store.

Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment.

I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . .

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Once is Not Enough

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According to a billboard I saw today, a child is diagnosed with autism every 20 minutes!

That goes to show how little I know about it. I would have thought that once would be enough.

Is he still autistic, doctor?

I’m afraid so, but I’ll check him again in 20 minutes . . .

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Guarantees vs. Commitments

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A thought exercise: “How long will it take you to get to work tomorrow? Can you guarantee it? To give us a guarantee, you’d probably put a buffer on your answer first. I guarantee a team working to put together software for the next two weeks is engaged in something a lot less well understood than a daily commute. We can put in a buffer – promise less – to give you a guarantee, or we can work from our estimates and do our best.”

— William Wake

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Career Advice for the Deluded

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If you don’t have something that is overwhelmingly important to do, then you probably don’t have anything that you’d absolutely rather be doing than getting up and going to work every day. So just start doing that. In any field. And stop deluding yourself that you have so many interests that you can’t choose. Really what you have is no clear interest and only a bunch of things you would consider if you had nothing to do.

— Penelope Trunk, “Steps to figuring out your next career move”

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The Customer is NOT Always Right

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Great sequence of posts on the scrumdevelopment Yahoo group . . .

Person A says the number one rule of business is that the customer is always right.

Person B says the customer is NOT always right, like his customer who wants an auction system like eBay on a budget of $1,500.

Person A says Person B needs to shut up and listen to the customer.

Person B says

I AM listening. They want something like Ebay for $1500. They want me to build a full Ebay clone this weekend and then tweak it until they’re happy over the next two weeks. I have listened carefully and diligently and have confirmed multiple times. This is definitely what they want. They’d also like time travel, but they don’t need that until April.

The point I’m making is that there are many reasons why just listening to your customer and giving them what they ask for is often not a good idea – for you or for the customer.

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Finding the Core

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Shared vision as the DNA of an organization . . .

It’s common knowledge that Southwest is a successful company, but there is a shocking performance gap between Southwest and its competitors. Although the airlines industry as a whole has only a passing acquaintance with profitability, Southwest has been consistently profitable for more than thirty years.

Made to Stick cover

The reasons for Southwest’s success could (and do) fill up books, but perhaps the single greatest factor in the company’s success is its dogged focus on reducing costs. Every airline would love to reduce costs, but Southwest has been doing it for decades. For this effort to succeed, the company must coordinate thousands of employees ranging from marketers to baggage handlers.

Southwest has a Commander’s Intent, a core, that helps to guide this coordination. As related by James Carville and Paul Begala:

Herb Kelleher [the longest-serving CEO of Southwest] once told someone, “I can teach you the secret to running this airline in thirty seconds. This is it: We are THE low-cost airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company’s future as well as I can.

“Here’s an example,” he said. “Tracy from marketing comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. What do you say?”

The person stammered for a moment, so Kelleher responded: “You say, ‘Tracy, will adding that chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn’t help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we’re not serving any damn chicken salad.'”

Kelleher’s Commander’s Intent is “We are THE low-fare airline.” This is a simple idea, but it is sufficiently useful that it has guided the actions of Southwest’s employees for more than thirty years.

— Chip Heath & Dan Heath, Made to Stick

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Well Played, Sir

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Grocery clerk

I’m waiting in line at Trader Joe’s while the checkout guy engages the woman in front of me in a conversation about her groceries, her occupation, where she went to school . . . it’s not even a particularly long conversation in terms of elapsed time . . . the guy just talks so fast that he’s able to cover a lot of ground.

Personally, I don’t like conversing with service personnel unless they’re attractive women, and even then I don’t like it that much.

OK, my turn. The first item out of the basket is a package of dog chews.

“What kind of dog do you have,” the guy asks.

I decide to try a little verbal jiu jitsu and say “We don’t have a dog. You ever try those things? They’re really good.”

It doesn’t even slow him down.

“Do they clean your teeth?” he asks. “I bet they do. We’ve got ’em in mint flavor, you know . . .”

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