Getting to know one another

We’re all so busy, so consumed with our day-to-day tasks and checklists, that we don’t spend enough time really listening, enquiring, showing real interest, getting to know one another well.

How often do we meet someone new, make polite cursory conversation, exchange business cards perhaps, and go our separate ways? Perhaps we are introduced to a friend of a friend – how often when that occurs do we walk away with only their name in our heads and nothing else?

Over the past weekend, this came up in discussion amongst friends, one of whom is Italian. She expressed frustration with the North American communication style, with its emphasis on our work rather than our play. Think about it – two common questions when first introduced are ‘What do you do?’ and ‘Where do you work?’ As if there’s nothing else to talk about, our work defines us. Gak. My Italian friend emphasized that both of those questions would be looked upon with disdain in most of Europe – initiating a conversation with someone new based upon their work is considered impolite.

Why is it in North American conversation that politics and religion are considered taboo topics even amongst close friends? Are we so concerned about offending each other? Why don’t we spend more time discussing (nee debating) key issues in our society around us, particularly in these difficult times? Why is it that we’re quick to discuss our work, but hardly ever do we enquire of each other’s health, or the interests and pursuits of our families and friends?

We should all consider these points when meeting someone new:

• Shift the focus to the other person – ask questions until it hurts
• Listen eagerly to their responses
• Ask questions about their interests, their passions, their family, their friends
• Delve into topics of interest to them, whether or not those topics might be contentious
• Explore common ground to develop a relationship quickly

Work getting you down?

Times are tough, no doubt, and we’re all stressed by the uncertainty of it all. If you need a break, and a good reason to smile, try three of these and call me in the morning.

YouTube #1 : “Stand By Me” – around the world. It would have been wonderful to be a part of creating this film. It’s a strong reminder that we each stand by each other through tough times.

YouTube #2 : OK, maybe you don’t like Robin Williams, and maybe for his fans this material on the American political scene isn’t as manic as it once was, but you know, it’s still pretty darned good. Guaranteed to elicit at least one guffaw and a couple of chuckles – at the very least. 

YouTube #3 : Finally, if you’re having a tough day, just think of these ants – carrying loads 4 times their size the ant equivalent of a 1/2 mile to the surface, in the end moving 4 tonnes of earth to build a community over 500 sq metres in size. Be patient, after the 3min mark, the scale of their construction is exposed. Now that is teamwork – a collective will.

Grab Bag Part 1

I’ve got an enormous backlog of items of interest I want to write about, and it’s hard to determine where to begin. Scanning over my list of items, many of them I’ve set aside to read, others are quick items of interest from the web and other blogs. With an eye to at least contributing towards my writing rhythm, here are a selection of interesting items that I’ve come across.

The Missing Piece Meets The Big O - This is an excellent bit of philosophical sketching that’s appealing in its simplicity, and the simplicity of its message. (Thanks to my friend and philosopher-extraordinaire Ray for passing this along.)

In September 2007, The Economist published their Technology Quarterly, always a good source of fresh reading and ideas. Although dated, and now accessible to subscribers only (sorry), the TQ included a piece on the ‘geoweb’ and the future of spatial data on the internet, the next generation of light bulbs without filaments, the state of development of electric cars (already dated now), the anticipated increase in demand for nuclear power, and Ubuntu and open-source operating systems.

If you haven’t seen any of the TED video presentations yet, please take the time to visit the TED site. The number and quality of presentations is remarkable, and it’s hard to beat TED for some thought-provoking content on the web. Beats watching TV anyday. In particular, on one of our favourite topics of food production, here’s Michael Pollan speaking on the omnivore’s dilemma.

My wife and I attended a summer party earlier this year, perhaps a Stampede party, and couldn’t help but notice the amount of waste produced in the process of celebrating a fine summer morning. It got us thinking that, at the very least, replacing all of the plastic cutlery with something biodegradable would be a start, along with paper plates. After not much digging on the web, we came across Tater Ware, bio-based products made from potatoes. Now, knowing how much food-for-fuel has distorted our food production recently, this may not be the best idea around, but imagine if we could take a lot of our waste food product and turn it into biodegradable products such as this.

Back in September, Guy Kawasaki posted the top three winners of the Slideshare World’s Best Presentation Contest, including this excellent presentation entitled ‘Thirst’ on our need to conserve and preserve our fresh water resources, and this one ’Foot Notes’ which inspired this shot.

Foot Loose

Another piece that caught my eye in the fall was this one on designs for an LED light bulb. I believe my interest in these new lighting technologies stems from my firm belief that we will see significant advances in many areas of energy conservation in our lifetime. If we reflect on the advances witnessed by our parents, we should be as excited as they were, but perhaps more pragmatic about considering the parallel impacts of new technologies.

How about another short piece from Michael Pollan from Newsweek May 2008 on the need “to grow food for people, not for cars or cattle.”?

I can’t recall where I read about this gem of online graphic collaboration from GE, but it’s enjoyable to experiment with. I am not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, even less so digitally, but for those who might collaborate online on a quick sketch of a process or new product, it could be a superb free tool.

Going back in the grabbag, here’s a piece on YouTube on Earth Hour 2008 – given the current firestorm in southern Australia, it’s apropo. Perhaps turning everything off for an hour once a year is symbolic, but perhaps we all need a little more symbolism in our lives these days to remind us of the course ahead. And while we’re on YouTube, if you haven’t seen this piece of excellent writing on the Lost Generation, take the time to watch it.

Do you believe that you have a strong grasp of world geography? Puzzled recently when you couldn’t remember where the Seychelles are? Try out this enjoyable and quick game from TripAdvisor, the Traveller IQ Challenge.

Banning Plastic Bags – Part 2

Further to my earlier post on banning plastic bags in Calgary …

Someone asked me recently why we should worry about disposable plastic bags when there are larger and graver issues of pollution and climate change. Although I appreciate that disposable plastic bags only amount to 2% of landfills, for me the importance is that it’s something that we can manage ourselves – it’s a behavioural change that we can implement and that will have a positive impact.

There’s also a note of self-interest here – I’d like to be sailing the high seas in retirement and I don’t really want to be awash in plastic while I do it. For evidence of how our plastic culture is impacting the oceans, and particularly amongst the Pacific islands, look here and here and here and especially here and here.

Clearly a ban on disposable plastic bags can work, with the required change in our shopping behaviour. For San Francisco and many other cities, it worked. For Ireland with a national ban, it worked very well, with a 94% decrease in the use of disposable plastic bags within weeks. Here especially the Irish environment minister went after the big motivator – people’s purses – by putting a levee on each and every plastic bag, passing effective and tough legislation including enforcement, and not allowing the retailers to swallow the costs on behalf of their patrons. This ensured that shoppers were actually seeing the full cost of their behaviour, something which is key I believe to the changes we’re going to need to make in our lifetimes.

In the end, it was cheaper for retailers who didn’t have to pay for disposable bags, a savings which in a competitive environment they passed along to their patrons. For shoppers, it meant that they had to develop a new habit (to make sure that they have their reusable bags on hand) which, from my own experience, takes a few weeks at most.

OK, Calgary City Council, do the study, look at the options, then get going and commit – find the 80% solution and take a stand.

PMI-SAC Awards Gala – Nominations Open

The local chapter of the Project Management Institute is holding their bi-annual Awards Gala on May 12, 2009. Nominations are open until January 31st for a variety of awards, honouring significant contributions in project management in the past. It’s a great opportunity to nominate your colleagues, your clients, or perhaps an educational provider or organization who impressed you with their adoption and practice of project management methods. The keynote speaker is Captain James Lovell of the Apollo 13 mission, which promises to make it an impressive evening.

 

PMI-SAC Awards Gala - http://www.pmisac.com

Banning Plastic Bags

Calgary has recently joined the growing list of North American cities considering a ban on plastic bags by deciding unanimously to request a report on the alternatives, to be delivered in a few months. I salute the effort, but I fear that not much will come of it in the end. I encourage Calgary City Council to take this issue seriously and demonstrate leadership on this issue in Western Canada. Here’s what I just wrote to my city alderman, Druh Farrell.

I was disappointed that City Council deferred real action on plastic bags, choosing instead to strike a study on the impact of such a ban. 

From my perspective, alternatives are already available to disposable plastic bags in the form of reusable bags (of many forms) and biodegradable ‘plastic’ bags. Why do we as a society not remember that our parents and our grandparents managed just fine without this type of convenience? 

The impact of plastics upon our health and our environment is well documented and clearly unsustainable. Alternatives exist – which admittedly require changes in behaviour on our part – always the hardest challenge to overcome, human behaviour and habits. 

My two cents worth – let’s move forward as soon as possible, encouraging local industry to provide viable alternatives and new diversified business at a time of economic weakness, while educating the Calgary public on those alternatives and encouraging the required change in behaviours.

If-Then Instead of What-If

Paul Ritchie @ Crossderry picked up on a post by Glen Alleman on the 5 P’s of Managing Projects. Reading through this reminded me of lessons learned from early in my years of mountaineering. In the early days, I led or participated in a number of ascents that went dramatically wrong – 3 in one season – which forced me to step back and assess where I was going wrong. In retrospect, in each case, poor planning and preparation had led directly to the long days and less-than-enjoyable experiences. Those experiences taught me quickly that the mountains would make me pay for shortcuts taken in planning before leaving the city.

In a similar vein, the ‘If-Then’ question is something thought of and discussed in the mountains to pass idle time. Often long stretches of fairly mindless walking, or lengthy belays on a technical pitch, can give the mind reason to wander. I was taught early on by mentors to stay alert playing the “If-Then” mind game, constantly assessing the environment, and analyzing “if” something bad happens, “then” what’s the response? “If” my partner should fall at this point on the pitch, “then” I’ll have to do respond in “this” way. “If” someone on my rope should fall into a crevasse right here, “then” are we in a position to quickly pull them out? Are there environmental risks we should take into account?

Combining the 5 P’s with a constant assessment of the project environment, questioning “If-Then” whenever possible, can help us to keep ourselves mentally sharp throughout a project – whether it’s a one-day mountain ascent or a multi-month software development.

Developer testing is not enough

Collaborative Software Testing: Testing is Overrated.

Jonathan stumbled upon this presentation, and he was right to blog on it – it’s an excellent summation of why development teams should not rely upon unit tests alone. In reading the comments and slides of Luke Franci, I was dumbfounded that a team would rely entirely on unit tests before releasing software – no wonder so many software projects don’t meet expectations. Obviously the appropriate blend of code reviews, unit testing, manual testing, usability and acceptance tests is required because, as Luke points out, “no single technique is effective at detecting all defects.” As he says “this is just the start” – I would add to the list performance and scability design and testing, and user acceptance testing by a product champion or selected key users.

It was good to see code reviews listed as an element of Luke’s presentation – these can take various forms and, in my experience, can prove invaluable for catching design flaws and performance issues early in the game. Whether it’s a design or implementation review with peers, or one-on-one “pair reviewing”, or line-by-line peer reviews over pizza, however your team wishes to build code reviews into the development process, it’s a wise investment in their skills and in the code base.

Trends for 2009

With the arrival of the new year, I got thinking yesterday of the anticipated trends for 2009. Looking around the web produced some interesting results. 

From Baselinemag.com on IT infrastructure:

Software as a service; Virtualization; Energy-efficient data centers; Security, risk and compliance; Enterprise mobility; Social networking; Web 2.0; Document management and e-discovery; Project and portfolio management; Web and video collaboration

Looking at this list makes me wonder if they simply recycled the list from 2008. With the exception of “Project and portfolio management”, none of these seem new. An increase in the development and availability of project and portfolio management tools would be welcome, although simply having more tools for this doesn’t necessarily mean that corporate executives will necessarily make the right decisions. Looking at this list also makes me wonder when it was written – it doesn’t seem to reflect the downturn in the business cycle with little mention of the anticipated pressure on IT to lower costs in the short run.

From Gartner on strategic technologies:

Virtualization; Cloud computing; Beyond blade servers; Green IT; Web-oriented architectures; Enterprise mashups; Specialized systems; Social software and social networking; Unified communications; Business intelligence

This list seems to reflect better the state of IT currently – all of these topics can directly or indirectly lead to cost reductions for IT or improvements in business processes for cost reductions elsewhere in the enterprise. 

From McKinsey Quarterly on business technology trends:

Distributing cocreation; Using consumers as innovators; Tapping into a world of talent; Extracting more value from interactions; Expanding the frontiers of automation; Unbounding production from delivery; Putting more science into management; Making business from information

This list is obviously taking a viewpoint from a more abstract level, but it’s an interesting read, paralleling some similar thoughts from The Economist earlier this year in their special report on innovation. “Distributing cocreation” is “open innovation” to others, as is “Tapping into a world of talent” and “Using consumers as innovators”.

Obviously these predictions need to be taken with a grain of salt – given the uncertainty of the current business climate, anything could happen in IT in 2009! Let the challenges begin! 

 

Building a great programming career

http://www.stellman-greene.com/2008/10/23/building-a-great-programming-career/

This caught my eye when I was busy but scanning through my RSS feeds. Later on when I had more time, I went back to give it a full read.

I thought of a couple of things to add – based upon a similar conversation I had with my good friend Predrag Stanar last year.

Learn how to debug code – not just about logging and breakpoints and watch variables, but about how to eliminate potential contributing factors and isolate the bug until it just can’t escape your scrutiny. Sometimes a bug is obvious, more often than not it requires diligent effort to isolate it to a particular method or perhaps even a few lines of code. Come up with your own style of breaking down problems into smaller units – it’ll make debugging much easier.

Learn early on about refactoring and unit testing, in whatever order you choose. Refactoring can be a joy if it’s done regularly and consistently – left to its own devices, a unit of code can get pretty grungy over time with multiple contributors without some regular analysis and cleanup. Excellent tools like JetBrains ReSharper should be in your hip pocket on all jobs – in fact, I recommend you have your own personal copy, it’s that good. For C# projects, the combination of ReSharper and NUnit can save a huge effort in testing and debugging code before release.

At all times look for ways to configure your application from the outside, consider how you can design your code to always run with external configuration files. This will make supporting and maintaining your commercial application far easier – simple XML or text configuration files can be easily maintained and adjusted on site at clients by skilled client-facing staff or support technicians. Think in design not just about skinning the application in this way, but about how to adjust the guts of the code from the outside. Your testers will appreciate it as well, since it will make their testing (manual or automated) considerably easier than having to recreate build after build to adjust the application behaviour.