“Doc” List and I proposed an ethics open space for Agile 2008.

We all experience pressure to compromise our work and our reasonable care for others. As software becomes more beneficial, more pervasive, and inter-connected, our potential to harm grows.

Agile practices are making a contribution to ethical practice in our field, but we can and should be doing more to help each other navigate the ethical dilemmas we face.

This session will attempt to frame professional ethics in the context of agile values, make the community aware of the regulatory environment we may face from both state governments and standards bodies, and engage the participants in a conversation about how our day-to-day actions affect our employers, customers, peers, end users, and society.

Here’s the proposal http://submissions.agile2008.org/node/1573. Please rate and comment!

Posted: January 28th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 3

From the NY Daily News via the Gothamist. Claims there’s a car dead zone around the Empire State Building.

…people suspect that it’s the presence of the multitude of radio and tv transmitters on the building’s 203-foot spire …jamming key-less locking systems and automotive disabling security systems.

Interactions among hard and soft technologies having an unintended effect on people — or bullshit.

Urban Legend In The Making: The ESB Dead Zone

Posted: January 27th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

“…there are countless small, unpretentious things we know with complete certainty.

Happiness is preferable to misery, and dignity is better than humiliation. It is bad that people suffer, and worse if a culture turns a blind eye to their suffering. Death is worse than life…

the attempt to find a common point of view is better than manipulative contempt for it.”

- Simon Blackburn, Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

Posted: January 27th, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

From John Maeda’s SIMPLICITY, a real life parable about a scientist and his devoted assistant:

“…great people know how to take care of their people. For a great person does not become great by themselves.”

Read the full post.

Posted: January 21st, 2008 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

The IEET posted Charlie Chaplin’s speech from The Great Dictator.

“Hope…

I’m sorry but I don’t want to be an Emperor - that’s not my business - I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that.

We all want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the earth is rich and can provide for everyone…”

Search your heart. How did these words make you feel? Is there hope?

If these words strike you as ridiculous, what kind of world does that leave us?

Posted: December 14th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

“With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on…” — Lincoln’s Second Inaugural

Roger Boisjoly was a Thiokol engineer who found “large arcs of blackened grease” on the solid boosters recovered from successful shuttle launches. He identified a correlation between cold temperatures and leakage of hot gases from the O-Ring seals in the solid boosters.

In January 1986, based on Boisjoly’s analysis and forecasts of cooler temperatures than ever experienced during a shuttle launch, Thiokol recommended the shuttle Challenger not launch.

NASA could not proceed over the contractor’s objections. “Appalled” by Thiokol’s recommendation, NASA held a private caucus with Thiokol management. A senior Thiokol executive was asked to, “take off his engineer hat and put on his management hat.” (Rogers Commission, 1986)

As a result, while still expressing concern, Thiokol withdrew their objection for lack of definitive proof. The age old argument for ignoring risk. By definition, no risk is certain.

Challenger exploded during launch killing all seven aboard.

In the aftermath, Boisjoly testified before the shuttle commission which is why we know all this.

As a result of coming forward, Boisjoly experienced such a hostile workplace he was granted sick leave and then extended disability.

In 1988, Boisjoly was awarded the AAAS Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. He is a role model of ethical action.

The most important thing to learn from his example is that ethical behavior is not about being right or infallible.

Despite his expertise, in[sight] and integrity lives were lost. At points he respected the chain of management even though he clearly disagreed with their decisions.

However, when it became clear he had, against his best efforts, contributed to tragedy, he stepped forward despite the consequences.

Human judgment is fallible but we must act to create the most benefit and least harm in accordance with the principle that others have as much right to joy, fulfillment and dignity as we do ourselves.

If harm results from even our best efforts we must take responsibility.

No one is perfect and there are always mitigating circumstances but there are also no excuses.

[NOTE: The Boisjoly Case Study is borrowed from Engineering Ethics: An Industrial perspective by G. Baura.]

Posted: December 2nd, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

I posted how Anpanman by Takashi (嵩) Yanase (柳瀬) is my role model. Turns out John Maeda has similar sentiments.

What a noble aspiration to act under the belief, “That if you had more you could always get by with less.” One I find very hard to live up to.

In the workplace, I hate to assume responsibility for decisions I did not make. I’m not talking about anything illegal. I’m talking about the daily harms people inflict on others — particularly those over whom they hold power.

There is an industry around how to confront such situations but let’s admit there are people and events we cannot change.

Having no participation or influence over the decision, I want to stay out of it.

But as a human being of good will I have to acknowledge harm and live with my action or inaction in the face of it.

So what can you do when you have no means within your role or recourse to outside authority?

Consider the person and respond as an individual. Give of your personal time and resources.

I aspire to this and very often fall short. But I am challenged and inspired by an absurd and beautiful Japanese children’s character.

I am also inspired by the actions of others including my wife, Kathie, my former employer, Peter, and my friend and co-worker, Luke. Small, extraordinary acts of good will by good people.

Posted: November 23rd, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

I’ll be presenting two talks at the November Scrum Gathering.

One of them is dear to my heart. I’ll be using this blog over the next few months to work up my ideas and document conversations I have around this topic.

The Ethics of Scrum and Agile Software Development.

Here’s what I proposed:

Presentation Description

Are Scrum and XP inherently ethical?

In the face of contradictory beliefs over what we do and how we do it, we software developers, agile or not, experience pressure to compromise our work and our due care for others. Meanwhile, as our products become more beneficial, more pervasive and inter-connected our potential to harm grows.

Attempts by the ACM and IEEE to engage us in a dialog on norms of conduct has resulted in a controversial code of ethics that borrows heavily from established engineering disciplines – mandating specifications to ensure effective software.

We, agile software developers are making an under-appreciated contribution to ethical practice in our field.

Whether our work is a profession or craft, we need to engage the larger community in a conversation about how our day to day actions affect our employers, our peers, and our society. This presentation will attempt to frame professional ethics in the context of agile values and practices.

Why is this topic of interest to Scrum Gathering attendees?

The discussion over norms of ethical conduct happens outside the earshot of most working developers. The day to day experience of Scrum practitioners is at a distance from those who concern themselves with software ethics.

As a Scrum community, we have a responsibility to help shape the expectations placed upon us by others. We cannot delegate our integrity. Nor can we defer concerns over negligence, recklessness, or intent to harm the human beings who use the systems we create. We openly discuss our projects, our working conditions, and our advancement but to protect those very interests we often deal with issues of conscience privately.

Yet the passion behind Scrum is, in part, an idealistic one – a hope that by dealing openly and responsively with our stakeholders we will build something of real value. We need to harness this idealism to encourage each other make better decisions in the interests of stakeholders who do not pay us and do not always have a seat at the project table.

Given the downstream effect ethical lapses large and small have on society, we need to engage in this discussion or have the wrong solutions imposed upon us by employers, institutions, and regulatory agencies.

Presentation Objectives

1. Is it important for us to establish a shared commitment to ethical conduct?
2. What obligations a software developer should feel beyond fulfilling the requirements of their employer?
3. How the Agile Manifesto and Scrum/XP practices suggest a partial set of norms of ethical conduct.
4. How agile organizations have started to provide their own statements of principles to extend agile values and encompass conduct towards our peers and society.

Posted: August 30th, 2007 under scrum.
Comments: none

Ken Schwaber made an audacious comment today. To paraphrase:

“One of my canaries in the coal mine is the number of women in the software industry. Women are smarter than men. They tend to gravitate to careers where they are compensated well and find the work rewarding. They are fleeing the our industry in droves.”

He was speaking at Agile 2007 on The Enterprise and Scrum.

The Stanford Daily reported that “13 percent of CS undergraduates are female this year, down from 24 percent in the 1999-2000 school year.” This despite National Science Foundation statistics that show more women are receiving bachelors degrees than men.

I agree with Mr. Schwaber, a software industry more inviting to women entering the workforce would provide a better, more humane environment for all employees.

Also, what potential innovation is being lost? History is rife with examples of gender inequality in service and outcomes across a wide variety of industries — most troubling being medicine. A male dominated field should not be confident it is best serving its women consumers.

My company’s own research indicates that women are men’s peers when it comes to the use, ownership and purchasing decisions around technology. So this is an opportunity as much as it is a concern.

A 2006 paper by McDowell, Werner, Bullock and Fernald found that pair programming practice “may help increase female representation in the field.”

Agile values and practices support a collaborative, empowering and sustainable work place. As practitioners, we should encourage research on whether this can contribute to a more diverse workforce.

Fundamentally, we have to make software development more conducive to the contributions of half our population.

Posted: August 17th, 2007 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

Informed Consent — “the right of each individual potentially affected by a project to participate to an appropriate degree in decision making concerning that project” (Gail D. Baura, Engineering Ethics: An Industrial perspective)

“(T)he astronauts should have been informed of the possibility of O-ring failure before the Challenger launch…” — G. Baura

Often the people asked to pay down a risk are not the ones who suffer if the risk plays out. For Challenger, this distance contributed to the sacrifice of innocents.

As developers, we must never hide risk for which others suffer the consequences. This is core to Scrum. The team tells the Product Owner anything that may affect the business outcome of a project.

Scrum’s focus on self-directed teams instills the courage informed consent asks of us. Frequent opportunities to inspect and adapt gives it voice.

However, an ethical view obligates us to more than delivering business value and we cannot entirely cede our conscience to our product owners. We have an obligation to each other, our collective reputation, the people who use or indirectly benefit from our systems, and the public good. For the most part, these interests have no informed consent on our projects.

As Agile practitioners and Scrum advocates, how can we expand our conversation and help each other exercise due care?

Posted: August 8th, 2007 under scrum.
Comments: none