Rebirth of the designer-engineer

Fast Company interview with Sir James Dyson (i.e., the vaccum guy).

In my narrow view of the world, I had always thought that engineering and design were separate professions. But I realized then the same person could do both things, like a Renaissance man. So I spent seven years learning to be an engineer as well. Doing both is a better way of working. Instead of being commissioned with a design, you can do it all yourself. You don’t have to wait for something to come along. It’s rather 20th-century thinking that you should split them up. The idea of using product design to sell a product essentially started in the Thirties. Before that, engineers did everything.

Suckers always throw rock

Via the Good News Network,

Confirmation of my assertion that most people throw rock. But given that the experienced player knows this, you should throw scissors, knowing that your opponent will expect that you'll throw rock and thus throw paper... unless your opponent knows that you know...

Why Does a Salad Cost More Than a Big Mac?

Via Matt at Signal vs Noise,

A great graphic on why a salad costs more than a Big Mac in the U.S.

Extreme Programming's fundamental weakness

Our agile process requires people to spend the effort to listen and talk to each other, working closely. You have to be a people person to like it. It doesn't suit sociopaths. Accidently hiring a sociopath is going to make XP impossible. Trust me, I know. To me this is XP's fundamental weakness.

-- Chris Mountford

Testament Volume 1: Akedah available for free download

Douglas Rushkoff has been writing a comic that crosses Old Testament mythology with science fiction in a Vertigo series called Testament. Pretty interesting stuff.

Via a recent blog entry of his, a PDF of the first volume is available for free online.

"People over Process" misses the point

So I see two types of dysfunction related to "People over Process":

1. People are generally idiots... therefore we want an idiot-proof process
2. People are generally idiots... therefore we want to only hire the best and then we can rely on heroics

"People over Process" is supposed to address the first dysfunction but I see it lead to the second one too often.

Instead if we believe in Respect for People...

People are not generally idiots, but a poor process can sure make them seem so. Expertise is important (10 000 hours of deliberate practice), but even experts can be confounded by a dysfunctional system.

Hansei or Appreciative Inquiry?

Diana Larsen describes Appreciative Inquiry as a different approach to retrospectives that builds on strengths, success, and positive energy.

On the other hand, Matthew May clarifies that the Toyota version of relentless reflection, hansei, is not about celebrating success but rather more of a sobering reality check.

So which is the better approach? From positive psychology and the strengths movement, I suspect that Appreciative Inquiry is superior. However, I'm also wary that perhaps every so often, a sobering hansei-style reality check is also required.

Practically, I think I'll start suggesting that we try Appreciative Inquiry for our future retrospectives and see how that goes.

The cost of disrespect

Let's say you feel that you're not respected by someone. This may take only one incident.

What happens?

If you know of a better way of doing things you're not going to share it. You won't give that person the benefit of the doubt. You'll make sure you protect yourself by strictly following procedure (aka work to rule).

Imagine if this was multiplied by all the interactions within a project, a division, or an organisation and ask yourself how effective that project, division, or organisation will be.

That's the importance of Respect for People.

Hand-offs corrupt information

Demand amplification is a well-known concept in supply chain management that refers to the problems of interpreting the correct demand in a production system with imperfect information and (more significantly) delays.

I found this Beer Game simulator that shows that even with perfect information, a production system with delays is not that easy to manage effectively.

I've seen a similar phenomenon that I'll call "problem amplification". This is when some minor issue happens but by the time it's been handed down a management chain, it transforms into a crisis.

To me, both demand and problem amplification are examples of information corruption due to errors introduced by hand-offs.

I have a distinct memory of many of my grade school teachers reminding our class to use primary sources when doing citations in reports. This is what genchi genbetsu and evidence-based management are all about:

Accurate, reliable information from the best primary sources vs questionable, corrupted information from perhaps well-meaning but fundamentally suboptimal non-primary sources.

The "well-meaning" part is a critical point because it's very important to recognise (as is demonstrated by Beer Game simulations) that people are not engaging in this dysfunctional behaviour because they are bad people. The system as setup with its policies requiring hand-offs, restricted communication channels, over-specialised roles, etc. is designed for failure.