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.

PivotTables in Excel

I am all geeked about PivotTables in Excel after using them recently on a project.

It's not that it's like something out of this world or anything - but if you've seen them - you've probably said to yourself "Hey - how did they get that plus sign beside all those rows/columns".

What's really cool is that you can do nesting of these too!!

To get the PivotTable icons to show up go to: View - Toolbars - PivotTable.

A practical application of this would be if you used excel for your burndowns or product backlog and you wanted to roll-up a feature/tasks' sub-tasks/features.

Putting First Things First

I was listening to an audiobook while I was running today by John C. Maxwell called “Thinking for a Change”. In his book he talks about how to prioritize. He states that our priority shouldn’t be “to do the hardest things first, or the easiest things first, or the most urgent things first.” His goal is to do the first things first.

So what does John C. Maxwell mean by the first things first. What he means is doing the things that bring the highest value first.

I found this particularly interesting on how it could relate to the SCRUM framework. Often when I’m talking with clients we are assessing the highest-value / highest-risk features to put into a sprint. What often happens is that the business value is lost in this evaluation and the technical complexity becomes the driver. The defacto position becomes the highest-risk technical items are the highest-value business needs.

A prime example of this is a web site that we were recently working on had a link to a PDF that users could download, fill out, and fax into the company. The company then had internal people take this information and enter it into a system. The labour costs associated with this were enormous. The uncanny thing about it is that the process had been automated on the web site already!! By removing this link the company could save hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is certainly not a difficult technical task and could easily fit into a sprint – but somehow other important features that could not be realized in the short-term continued to be worked on.

That link no longer exists on the site – but I wonder how many other times is this opportunity available and how can I focus clients I work with to think about ROI for them.

Continuous Learning and the Abundant Sources of Information Available

I’d like to start us off by visiting a time when most of us have fond memories – our childhood.

When you were a child you were constantly interested in different things – it started the first time you asked your parents “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why do birds fly south in the winter? So why do we as adults stop asking why?

Why you might ask

I believe it’s because our goal once we start school (learning) is to finish school (learning) and get a job (who said I’d ever have to learn anything at the job – that’s what I went to school for!!).

If you are reading this blog – there’s a good chance that you are in the group of people who have decided that continuous learning is a life-long decision and doesn’t stop when your schooling is done.

So why do I feel this is important in the field of software development – because our reality is changing on a constant basis – be it new programming languages, new design patterns, new methodologies, new frameworks, geographic logistics, or new ways to collaborate.

Abundant Sources of Information

"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it."
-Samuel Johnson

Web Sites - There are literally hundreds to thousands of sites out there that can aide you in learning a new topic in the IT Profession. In fact, in doing this blog, I researched how I could podcast it – and found various step-by-step tutorials on the web. When I first started my software development career, I learned Active Server Pages (ASP) through sites like http://www.4guysfromrolla.com/ or http://www.asp101.com/ . These sites were extremely valuable in building my knowledge in the subject!!

Rich Media – Lately there has been a blossoming of internet related content from Google Videos and YouTube, to PodCasting and Blogging, to posting of mp3’s from conferences (http://www.itconversations.com/, http://www.infoq.com/, agiletoolkit.libsyn.com). This information is very portable, in fact I think half of the stuff on my iPod right now is either a PodCast or mp3 from some conference or another.

Audiobooks – Another avenue of information available either in bookstores or on the web. I have a membership with Audible (www.audible.com) – although you’re not likely to find too many IT books here – and again it’s portable!

Books – Ah, the old standby. Although the title eludes me at this time, I read a book around a year ago and one line in it was – whenever you go into a bookstore, make it a point to purchase one book – even if you aren’t going to read it straight away. I have adopted this advice and my library of books is growing quickly and I have read a large number of the books I have picked up in that time.

People - Are always a good source of information in a formal or informal setting!!!

With all this information available – anyone with the curiosity to keep asking why will be able to find what they are looking for. So make it your goal to decide “I want to learn something new and relevant to me” and then take the time to learn it.

"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain."
- Adlai Stevenson