Attention!!

Last year, I downloaded a mp3 from itconversations.com about Attention.

The keynote speaker of the panel, Linda Stone (blog link), discusses how we as a society have had major shifts in how we use our Attention. I was intrigued from this and checked out her blog site and found an important distinction between time management and attention management. For a long time I've been focused on time management and doing things with the time I have. One interesting expression I've heard is "I don't have time to do X". For example, "I don't have time to read this", "I don't have time to go to that conference". What the person really lacks is not time, but commitment to do X (read, go to the conference).

I would like to take that one step further and note that the person may lack the attention to do it as well. Linda Stone comments that our focus on time management is TACTICAL. It's about lists, optimization, effiecency. Borrowing from Kent Beck's model of using dictionary definitions:

TACTICAL - of or pertaining to a maneuver or plan of action designed as an expedient toward gaining a desired end or temporary advantage.

Linda also discusses how managing attention is STRATEGIC. It's about intention, making choices as to what does and does not get done.

So I will use my first ever syllogism:
Major Premise: I can manage my attention towards the things I do
Minor Premise: I can optimize the things I am doing

Therefore, if I strategically manage my attention first, then I can optimize those things that need my attention.

To often I've been in the position or seen others in the position of optimizing things that they don't need to be doing. By focusing my attention first, I can avoid optimizing my wasted effort.

Process Governance

Until recently I have been thinking about agile and scrum from a project only perspective. My challenge ahead is how can a company effectively adopt practices that work for it - incremental change versus a big-shift.

The context within which I'm working is that people need to be able to move from one project to another with reduced churn in that movement. Thus if I'm on a Scrum project and then go to a waterfall project, I am going to experience some churn as I re-adjust myself to the change.

An interesting concept I've been reading about is called Process Governance. It is the establishment of boundaries in which process variation occurs. This allows the organization to set boundaries and the development teams to satisfy them as they see fit. In the book "Go Team", I noticed this same concept in an analogy of school children on an open school yard. Without a fence around the school yard the children would group together and not explore the school yard. When the fence was added, the children felt comfortable to explore to the edge of the fence.

Providing the development community within your organization with boudaries to work within is an effective way for teams to explore and innovate while knowing the limits the organization will tolerate. This makes everyone more comfortable in the end and balances the effect of process anarchy vs. process dictatorship.

Facilipation ... or is it ... Particitation

Recently I've been involved in a few informal "lessons learned" for some initiatives we've been working on.

Due to my background, I feel qualified to lead these "retrospective" opportunities.

When doing so - I keep noticing a problem - I'm involved in the content!! How can I objectively led a retrospective and include my viewpoints at the same time.

So I came up with some terms:
Facilipation - This would be facilitate first, participate second
Particitation - the opposite - participate first, facilitate second

Here are some techniques I use in order to manage this ambiguity:

• Time Before. Since I'm planning the agenda, I give myself time before the retrospective to think about my answers to the activities. This allows me to give my full focus attention to the retrospective participants while still being able to provide my insights.
• Create a pause. Usually a topic can go in a direction I hadn't thought before the retrospective. While balancing the need to keep the topic on focus and taking in the information (which can be somewhat difficult) - when the opportunity to provide a break in the topic comes - instead of moving on to the next item/topic/thing, I pause and take a mental stock of the conversation and determine if I have any relevant insights to add.
• Stay objective. At other times a topic my go in a direction I may disagree with. This one can be dangerous as I may have an inclination to bias what is said or written. Objective activities can help reduce this issue - writing thoughts on cards, voting, etc.

In my opinion, in order to achieve an effective retrospective, the goal must be towards Facilipation. I am a facilitator first, a participant second. A poorly run / biased retrospective does no one any good.

Pandora Internet Radio

Ok. This one will be brief - however - I was doing some research for a project and came across this web site quite by chance. It was referenced as a direction that the client was looking to go in for their web site - obviously a different context though.

So the web site is: www.pandora.com

So you may be asking yourself "what is the big deal?!?!?".

Here is a summary of what you can do with Pandora Internet Radio:

• enter artists/songs you like - and it will find similar songs
• create multiple radio stations
• if you like a song you can enter the menu and buy it from iTunes or Amazon
• you can thumb down or thumb up the music
• you can say you like a song - but have heard it too much and not want to play it for a month

As with most of these offerings their is a free version with some limitations - or you can get off your wallet and buy the service. I don't find the limitations that terrible so I haven't taken the purchase plunge yet.

Now - the concept of this site is really neat - I'd like to see some search engines pick this idea up.