Accidentally in Code

Tag: process

Process, and Culture
Credit: Flickr / kakki****

As an individual, I have habits, and I have processes. The processes are things that aren’t quite natural enough to be habits, yet. I think process helps me create a framework that helps me be effective – at work, and in life. For example, having a schedule for my blog. Posting something on Monday, Wednesday and Friday means I write more, even if a lot of it isn’t very good. Some more general rules.
- Do the most important thing first.
- Eliminate known unknowns.
- Finish, don’t 80%.
- When feeling down, do something active.
- In the morning, get up then stay up.
The book The Power of Habit (Amazon) is an interesting one. One story is that of Alcoa, which became one of the safest company in the world after Paul O’Neill became CEO in 1987.

Becoming the safest company in the world meant a whole lot of process. But, with a shared goal that everyone could agree with – safety – the process wasn’t the goal, the culture was.

I’ve long thought that good process is invisible. And software engineers like to disagree, one because they are somewhat ornery, but also because software engineers are often allergic to process, to anything that looks like interference in their (our) craft.

And my realisation from reading that is this – good process is invisible, because good process gets called culture, instead.

Meetings are process. Transparency, is culture.

Post-mortems are a process. Accountability, is culture.

Deadlines are process. Shipping, is culture.

Quotas are process. “Meritocracy“, is culture.

Slogans are “culture”, without process to back them up.

“Mobile is crucial!” is a slogan. “We ship on mobile and desktop simultaneously” is culture.

“We value a diverse team” is a slogan. A sea of white males, is culture.

“Don’t feel the trolls” is a slogan. The harassment of women online (and off), is culture.

As an engineer who likes and appreciates process more than your average engineer, I take from this realisation a few things.

Firstly, when you try to create or add process, it has to fit with culture. It’s the difference between “We’ve agreed we want to expand our outreach, but that we don’t have enough information to prioritise. Here is how we can address that. We will try this for [period] and then evaluate.” and “Here’s a form to fill in when you want something.”

Secondly, a slogan is meaningless without some process. This is the difference between “It’s a key priority! We must figure this out!” and “These are the resources and goals allocated to this” – and the numbers reflect it’s importance.

Thirdly, this explains why people who are convinced they are in a meritocracy exhibit higher levels of cognitive bias. Why have a process for a problem that doesn’t exist?
February 19, 2014
The Waterfall Method is No Way to Plan Your Life

I have a new mentee, her name’s AY Daring and you should check her out because she’s awesome.

The other day we were talking about what she wants to do with her life, and she has this great stuff that she’s doing with respect to LGBT youth, and I said, “sure, that’s great but will there be a need for that in 20 years?” Honestly I hope there won’t be – I mean, look at how far we’ve come in terms of acceptance as a society.

This led me to talk about how you don’t want to use the Waterfall approach to planning your life – an agile approach is better because 1. we live in times where things are changing fast and 2. I think an agile approach to life planning makes for a more interesting life because you will be able to take advantage of options that don’t even exist now.

This is not to say that AY may not have found her life’s passion. Just that she doesn’t need to make that decision now.

Credit: wikipedia

Anyway, let’s break down what the waterfall method is. Basically, it’s the idea that first you identify all the requirements of your project, and then you design it. Only when the design is done do you implement it. Eventually, it’s all implemented and you test it. And this is normally when you discover that either the project has taken so long that it is obsolete, or that it is extremely broken and you go back to fix it. In theory, eventually the project is maintained. The reality is that the majority of software projects are late and/or over budget or fail completely.

The waterfall method is a terrible way to plan a software project, and perhaps a worse way to plan your life. The parallel would be, school is the requirements phase and you would never leave it and join the real world – you’d definitely be over budget then!

Agile is based on iterative or incremental development. Iterations in the scrum process are typically 1-2 weeks, and every day there is a daily stand up where you say what you did yesterday, what you hope to do today, and what roadblocks you have. The parallel in life might be weekly or monthly checkins with your mentor(s).

I’m not saying that big picture is not important, but there is no need – I would say even, no point – planning out your whole life in advance. First up – choosing what you want to spend your whole life on is a huge decision. Choosing what project you’re devoting yourself to for the next 3 months to 1 year is a smaller, and more realistic way to go. A theme, or general direction is more than enough. Identifying places where you might be lacking skills and choosing a path that ensures you build them as you go along allows you to stay flexible.

I am 25 and I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. That’s OK! I just try and prepare myself for the new – and even more awesome things – that will become possible as I go. I have a vague, but ambitious theme of world changing. Awesome Ottawa fits into this (more awesome is always better than less awesome), as does CompSci Woman (need more women in tech to code a better world). What skills am I working on right now? Leadership – because it seems like a crucial skill for world changing. Communication – because I need to be able to articulate what I’m doing and why it’s important, and also I must share what I’m learning along the way. Software Engineering – much as industrial research appealed to me I decided that I needed to find a job where I would ship products; I think this is a really important thing to know.

AY’s theme seems to be community building. But themes change and evolve, so we’ll see. Meanwhile at our next mentoring chat I’ll be asking – what did you do since we last spoke? What do you plan to do next? And what’s standing in your way?

October 7, 2010
Failure Is Not An Option
Credit: xkcd

Having admitted that I seek out a high level of stress, it’s timely that I have, once again, gone way past the level of stress that I like to operate and hit the “woah this is damaging to my productivity” bit. I wrote before about How to be Crazy Busy Without Losing Your Mind and apparently I should be listening to my own advice.

Or not, because flying right out of my comfort zone is one way to stretch it. Best not dwell on other likely outcomes though.

Over the next two and a half weeks I will:
- Pitch at the Canadian Expo for Extreme Blue
- Pitch at the North American Expo for Extreme Blue
- Spend half a day in Toronto finding out more about GBS (do I want to be a consultant? Answers on a postcard, please)
- Head to Waterloo for my 2nd on-site at Google
- Pitch to guy working on awesome project
- Interest interview with another awesome project
- Leave for a 3 week trip to the UK
In order to get to New York, we’re taking the bus. What’s interesting is the thing I’m most freaking out about right now is not one of the Failure-Is-Not-An-Option items on the list. It’s the thought of 8-10 hours of enforced unproductivity each way. It occurred to me the bus might have power-outlets and wifi and I could use the time to Get Stuff Done. It doesn’t. (The distress this caused me was amusing to my teammates, and then worrying – their plan: get me drunk and/or medicate me. My plan: read The Algorithm Design Manual (Amazon)). The way back was going to be 15 hours on the bus, because we’re coming back via Toronto. I’ve ended up getting off in Toronto instead for this GBS thing, and, unable to bear the thought of 5 hours on the train will fly back to Ottawa after that.

Was the total of 25 hours or so on a bus distressing to me as a European, because my perception of distance is different? I think it’s just – what do you do on a bus? With no power or wifi, clearly not code.

HR Guy: What were you planning on doing?

Me: I was thinking about creating some wordles, but anyway it’s not relevant. The thing is I don’t cope well doing nothing.

He suggested I watch movies and sleep. I think he and I see the world very differently.

So, what is this other than another story as to how I’ve completely over-committed and over-scheduled myself, again?

I have put this huge stress on myself because I really want to have a job lined up for January by the end of September, preferably by the end of August. And I don’t want it to be just any job, I want it to be a great job. And this is a problem because my ideas of what I want to do are somewhat vague – I want to make things! I want them to be pretty! I want to make the world a better place! Programmers can do that, I know it!

IBM is not a place that deals in vague. I was speaking to this awesome woman the other week and she said, “I love PROCESS! That’s why I liked being a software engineer, because I liked the PROCESS!” Last week I saw her again at a lunch and learn – she was talking about how she found a great job at IBM and it was all about how she navigated the process.

I do not deal with the process well. I find it intimidating and overwhelming and confusing. I’m trying to create this mapping between my ideals, goals, priorities and things that will fit into the process. I’m asking for things – which I hate, preferring to operate on the “be awesome and people will notice principle” that has so often failed me and others optimistic enough to use it.

Our MBA is my career coach. He says things like, “When you’re in Toronto you should set up meetings with at least 6 people”, and I make a note that I must speak to multiple people, ask my Toronto-based mentor if she wants to have lunch, and ask more people if they are willing for me to email them my resume.

It’s a start. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile… can I send you my resume?
Cate Huston UK Resume Mod
August 5, 2010