A month ago I followed the ScrumMaster (CSM) course of Jeff Sutherland and I'm an official ScrumMaster now. It was interesting to hear the guy that invented SCRUM - a former Phantom fighter jet pilot in Vietnam - expressing his vision on the IT industry. A couple of things stood out in the WAY he said them. He likes to formulate things differently. In the Passionate Programmer they talk about the transistion of being technology-centric to being solution-centric. You could tell that Jeff had an infinite respect for the developer (more than for management) but made an interesting statement: 'Developers are always whining and complaining about what's not right. In stead they should offer management clear choices'. For instance in stead of complaining 'we don't get the time to write tests' we as a community should say: 'Either we test and it will save (x-amount of) money in the long run or we don't and it will us cost money'. He's right. I've seen a lot of peers whining :)
Another thing a lot of developers don't do which I always try to, is the way we report issues. Before I communicate a problem to management or the customer, I try to have a list of possible solutions in my mind to propose to them. Not everyone does this, even if the answer to the report of a problem mostly is 'ok, what can we do about it?'.
Friday, May 6, 2011
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Dual core processing
I'm reading one of the best books EVER right now (and I do mean EVER), called 'Pragmatic thinking and learning' by Andy Hunt. The reason I like it so much is because it links my interest in IT and in psychology/biology (I did one year of Psychology at the KUL but failed).
Andy talks about the brain as a dual core processor, where CPU1 is the L-mode (lineair or also called left mode, but this is less correct) of the brain and CPU2 is the R-mode (rich mode or right mode). There also is a contention at the message bus level that allows communication between the two, which implies that only 1 mode can dominate your brain at a certain moment in time. In this context he explains why in eXtreme Programming 'pairing' is so important. If you 'drive' you brain uses the L-mode to deal with the words, correct syntax. High level patterns and relations are made by the R-mode however. This is why sometimes your navigator says 'and if you refactor this bit here out, we can re-use it in that other place'. He also explains that this is the reason that when you're not pairing and you face a difficult problem it's important to step away from your desk, giving your R-mode a chance to kick in. I used to experience this in the past when I still smoked. Often the solution to a problem came during my sigarette break!
Fa-sci-na-ting stuff. To be continued no doubt...I'm off buying an Andy poster.
Andy talks about the brain as a dual core processor, where CPU1 is the L-mode (lineair or also called left mode, but this is less correct) of the brain and CPU2 is the R-mode (rich mode or right mode). There also is a contention at the message bus level that allows communication between the two, which implies that only 1 mode can dominate your brain at a certain moment in time. In this context he explains why in eXtreme Programming 'pairing' is so important. If you 'drive' you brain uses the L-mode to deal with the words, correct syntax. High level patterns and relations are made by the R-mode however. This is why sometimes your navigator says 'and if you refactor this bit here out, we can re-use it in that other place'. He also explains that this is the reason that when you're not pairing and you face a difficult problem it's important to step away from your desk, giving your R-mode a chance to kick in. I used to experience this in the past when I still smoked. Often the solution to a problem came during my sigarette break!
Fa-sci-na-ting stuff. To be continued no doubt...I'm off buying an Andy poster.
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