Magic Pixie Dust: Increasing the pace of software delivery … through people Matthew Heusser...

Magic Pixie Dust:Increasing the pace of software delivery

… through people

Matthew Heussermatt@xndev.com

Presented at the Grand Rapids Perl Mongers26 August 2005

What this talk is not

Agenda

• The Nature of Innovation

• Effective Habits

• IN-Effective Habits (bad pixie dust)

• Common Objections

• What to do tomorrow

Agenda

Managing Euler

The Nature of Innovation

Managing Thomas Edison

The Nature of Innovation

Life in the widget factory

The Nature of Innovation

Innovation in the white space

• Innovation is concerned with redefining a task or the way a task is done – Gerald M. Weinberg,

Becoming a technical leader

• Process Innovation and Product Innovation

Effective Behaviors

Bad Pixie Dust

• Examples:– Extended mandatory overtime– Pressure– Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt– Implicitly cutting quality standards– Short-Term Cost reductions

Ineffective Behaviors / Bad Pixie Dust

The Big Game

• The role of the leader

Ineffective Behaviors / Bad Pixie Dust

The Status Meeting

• Who’s status are we talking about?

Ineffective Behaviors / Bad Pixie Dust

Getting it wrong

• “Gathering Requirements”

• Telephone Game

• The Ambiguous Spec

Effective Behaviors

Encouraging collaboration …

• Craftsmanship

• Prototypes

Effective Behaviors

Efficiency or Effectiveness?

Effective Behaviors

Maslow - Applied

Effective Behaviors

The trouble with learning

Effective Behaviors

Effective Behaviors

Single-Tasking

Effective Behaviors

Co-located Project Teams

Effective Behaviors

Commitment

• Amateur-ism

• Excellence

• Dedication

Effective Behaviors

Deliver Early, deliver often

Image from Software Engineering, a practitioner’s approach, 5th ed

Effective Behaviors

My boss needs to hear this …

Common Objections

But, Fred Taylor said …

Common Objections

What to do tomorrow

• Make a plan to change your culture– The legend of Holgar Dansk

• Identify bottlenecks in the way things are done– Remove them

• Find ways to reward experimentation – Keep it fun

• For Quality, Consider ‘Arete’

Discuss

References

• Weinberg, Gerald. Becoming a technical leader.

• DeMarco, Tom and Lister, Timothy. Peopleware

• Lister, Timothy. Slack.

• Pirsig, Robert, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

• Go google some famous inventors.

Bonus Section

Mappers or packers?

• The Context-Driven School– A Microsoft QA Manager– A Stryker Instruments QA Manager

Effective Behaviors

Managing Da Vinci

• Error

• Copy

• Combine

The Nature of Innovation

Managing Issac Asimov

The Nature of Innovation

The Agile Manifesto

Effective Behaviors

We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it.Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.