Khaos

Requirements Reuse

The first time you conceive a system based on a requirement, estimating the costs and benefits might be difficult. But, after implementation, you will have a much better idea of the costs and benefits triggered by that requirement.

A well-formulated, measurable, reusable requirement – including a full cost-benefit analysis as part of its description – is every bit as valuable as a reusable software module.

– John Favaro, “Managing Requirements for Business Value”, IEEE Software, vol. 19, no. 2, Mar/Apr 2002, pp. 15-17

Be Wary of Unanimous Agreement

If people are unanimously behind a concept, my first instinct is to think there’s something wrong with the concept

– Mark H McCormack, Never Wrestle With A Pig

Mark’s four reasons to be wary are:

1. The concept is too bland
2. People don’t care
3. People don’t get it
4. People are intimidated by the group leader

Measurement Dilemma

A while ago Tony quoted Weinberg.

In their desperation, they grasp at anything that’s easily measurable and has some apparent relationship with quality or
productivity.

Again he is talking about managers and the things we like to do to put in our
day. The example he gives is counting the number of lines of code. I don’t
measure this as I don’t believe it is a particularly useful measurement when
writing programs in Perl. However, I have been guilty of measuring things
without having a clear idea as to what meaning the results will give me.

Now I measure the amount of time spent to produce a function. I do this
because I want to improve our estimation process. By comparing actual time
with estimated time I can work out what is really meant by, “that will take me
3 hours”.

I also calculate final project costs. On client based work I use this to decide whether or not the job was completed quickly enough. If it cost us more to produce than the amount we were paid – we took too long to complete the job. What I haven’t been able to do is apply this to internal projects. We always have reasons why the job wasn’t completed within the estimated time and I don’t have enough information to know whether or not it would have been better to either not do the job at all or get someone else to do it for us.

Sawdust On The Floor

At lunch time today I glanced into a butcher’s shop and noticed that there was sawdust all over the floor. I haven’t seen sawdust on the floor of a butchers since I was a child. As I had no idea why they did this I thought I would look into it. It appears that sawdust is used as a soaking agent and is wonderful for helping you to clean up things like vomit and blood. So, this was put onto the floor to make it easier to clean up the blood that would drip from the carcasses. It was also used by some butchers to make sure that they never sold meat to people that was dropped on the floor.

Everything I read suggested that putting sawdust on the floor was something that butchers did years ago, which makes sense as I don’t recall seeing any dripping carcasses whilst shopping lately. So why do butchers in Belfast still put sawdust on the floor?

The Best Way

That some way of doing things has survived over time does not mean that it is the best way or the simplest way. It may only mean that no one has yet tried to find a better way.

– Edward de Bono, Simplicity

Some Things Take Time

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

– Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”

It took Leonard Cohen more than two years to write that song.

I was reading an interview with Cohen and I was impressed with the amount of effort he puts into writing his songs. Many people talk about songwriting as a mystic art, even Cohen himself.

If I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. It’s a mysterious condition. It’s much like the life of a Catholic nun. You’re married to a mystery”

Many songwriters, such as Bob Dylan, claim to write songs in about fifteen minutes and talk about songs as flowing from them and coming from a source beyond them. This can lead to the impression that writing good songs is just something that happens spontaneously to gifted people. This isn’t true. Good song writing is both a mixture of inspiration and hard work. Like any other craft it takes years of ground work to produce something special.

Cohen has spent years perfecting his craft. The finished version of “Democracy” contains six verses from the sixty or so that he wrote. This is one of the ones that he discarded as not being good enough.

From the church where the outcasts can hide
Or the mosque where the blood is dignified.
Like the fingers on your hand,
Like the hourglass of sand,
We can separate but not divide
From the eye above the pyramid.
And the dollar’s cruel display,
From the law behind the law,
Behind the law we still obey
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

– Leonard Cohen, from an interview published in “Songwriters on Songwriting”

Optimitis

Every occupation has its characteristic diseases. The inability to resist solving problems is only one of the occupational diseases from which consultants suffer. Many consultants pickle their livers at business lunches, blind their eyes on voluminous reports, or bend their spines in endless meetings. But the most serious occupational disease is known as optimitis.

Optimitis can be found in anyone who is asked to produce solutions to problems. It is an inflammation of the optimization nerve, that part of the nervous system which responds to such requests as

“Give us the minimum cost solution.”
“Get it done in the shortest possible time.”
“We must do it in the best possible way.”

In a healthy individual, the optimization nerve responds to such requests and sends an impulse to the mouth to respond,

“What are you willing to sacrifice?”

In the diseased individual, however, this neural pathway is interrupted, and the mouth utters some distorted phrases like,

“Yes, boss. Right away, boss.”

– Gerald M. Weinberg, The Secrets of Consulting, Chapter 2