Author Archives: Ken Judy

About Ken Judy

I am an executive leader, software developer, father and husband trying to do more good than harm. I am an agile practitioner. I say this fully aware I say nothing. Sold as a tool to solve problems, agile is more a set of principles that encourage us to confront problems. Broad adoption of the jargon has not resulted in wide embrace of these principles. I strive to create material and human good by respecting co-workers, telling truth to employers, improving my skills, and caring for the people affected by the software I help build.

The channeled scablands

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channeled_scabland.png

By 1920, earth scientists had come to embrace a theory of Uniformitarianism, a world shaped by slow, inexorable forces observable in the present day.

Uniformitarianism fit the evidence of the time and served to separate Geology from Bible scholarship. Glaciers and plate tectonics not God’s miraculous, scourging hand.

The channeled scablands in Eastern Washington State are hard-rock canyons cut by non-existent rivers, alkaline lakes, and house sized boulders scattered on flat plains.

Based on evidence gathered from this terrain, Geologist J. Harlen Bretz came to believe the channeled scablands were, in fact, formed by a catastrophic flood.

The scientific establishment refused Bretz’s claim. Still, over decades, he continued to teach. He continued to champion his work.

Within his lifetime, Bretz’s theory gained wide support based on corroborating evidence of a 2,000 foot deep prehistoric lake over what is now Missoula, Montana and research into ice dams and hydrodynamics.

The channeled scablands were carved out by massive, rapid floods. 500 cubic miles of water traveling 30 to 50 miles an hour draining a lake half the size of Lake Michigan in days.

Recent evidence bridges uniformitarian and catastrophist world views. The scabland floods cycled over thousands of years. Glacial movement would re-establish the ice dam, a new lake would form, water would reach critical height, the dam would shatter.

The origin story of a landscape I’ve loved since childhood from father-son fishing trips, solitary hikes, college road trips and vacations with my wife and daughter, is awe inspiring.

The path to understanding that origin story is both hopeful and cautionary. Science lived up to its ideals though it took the passing of a generation of scientists to get there.

Once an idea hardens into a belief, a belief that supports a deeply held world view, even people dedicated to reasoned debate have trouble hearing evidence to the contrary.

Natural and human events prove unsettlingly complicated. In response, we humans can turn even our most enlightening ideas into weapons of ignorance.

More estimates in real life

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Constraints

(July 2008) “There are some 146,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, down from a peak of 170,000 in 2007” — Reuters

“Although no decision has been made, by the time President Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, at least one and as many as 3 of the 15 combat brigades now in Iraq could be withdrawn or at least scheduled for withdrawal, the officials said. The most optimistic course of events would still leave 120,000 to 130,000 American troops in Iraq.” — NYT

(July 2007) “More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts… The numbers include at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis — all employed in Iraq by U.S. tax dollars.” — LA Times

Goal

“(O)n my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war… ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected.” — Barack Obama

Estimate

“Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month” — Barack Obama

Target

“…that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010” — Barack Obama

A lot of attention has been placed on the target of sixteen months and whether Obama will stick to it. Obama has said, “I am going to do a thorough assessment when I’m there,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll have more information and continue to refine my policy.” This has been called a “flip flop” or “reversal”.

But this is a simplistic interpretation of both Obama’s position and the nature of a target. The target is informed by the estimate in an attempt to attain the goal. The target should change as new information provides better estimates and if the adjusted target better attains the goal.

comparitive us force levels by the congressional research serviceIt is not the target but the estimate and goal that need to be debated.

Who are the military experts? Does this estimate represent a consensus among these experts? What are the assumptions surrounding this estimate? Does a range of 1-2 brigades per month represent the full range of uncertainty? What are the set of risks that might scuttle this estimate?

What does safety mean in the context of a war? What does it mean to ensure our “interests” are “protected”? What kinds of events would threaten our interests and change the redeployment schedule?

As long as our public debate focuses on positional bargaining around targets we will continue to miss the point.

Estimates in real life

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The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, begins:

“Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.”

The nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations concluded:

“(M)ost of the key judgments have since been debunked as inaccurate, false, or misleading. ”

“According to the Senate committee’s July 2004 report, analysts who wrote the NIE relied more on an assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) than on an objective evaluation of the information they were reviewing. This group-think dynamic, the report states, led analysts, intelligence collectors, and managers to ‘interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program’ and led them to ‘ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have an active and expanding program.'”

A vast majority of senators did not read the whole report but only the summary or how that summary was represented by the administration.

“It’s probably pretty hard to say with 100 percent certainty how many read it,” the senior staffer said. “You can say with 100 percent certainty that it’s less than 10.” — The Hill

The unlikely became possible, the possible became probable, the probable became fact and the “facts” rallied a country to war.

Stop calling it an estimate. Stop pretending it’s a commitment.

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A product owner describes work. The team estimates it. The product owner sets a delivery target. The team commits to it.

Estimates

People are good at estimating their own ideal effort on well-defined work within their realm of experience.

People are poor at translating ideal effort into calendar days, estimating how long others will take to perform work, and estimating work that is either poorly understood.

Estimation is time consuming with diminishing returns so the effort should be managed to cost, i.e. time-boxed. That is why Agile practices invest more energy and place more value in estimating immediate work than on more speculative work farther out.

All estimates contain uncertainty. Industry research says an upfront estimate can be 25% to 400% of actual performance. The range of uncertainty is deeply dependent on context: how much work is involved, development lifecycle, experience with the particular work, shared experience within the development team and maturity of the management organization.

It is poor practice to “pad an estimate”. Padding doesn’t match the scatter that surrounds upfront estimation. For large scopes of work a developer should express an estimate as a range of uncertainty (i.e. “four to eight months skewing to between six and eight”).

Middle managers should not pad or trim a developer estimate. That is undermining the developer’s authority and making them un-accountable. The estimate is the estimate.

That doesn’t mean that the business doesn’t make planning decisions based on estimates. It means those decisions are separate from, though informed by, the estimate.

Targets

When a product owner or sponsor takes a developer estimate of 4-8 months and sets a release date six months out, they are moving beyond the estimate to set a business target. This is a judgment of what expense and time to market promise sufficient value to justify the work.

The product owner is using the developer’s estimate to inform themselves of the risk they are taking with their investment. An aggressive target within an estimate with high uncertainty is a larger risk than a conservative target on a more certain estimate.

Commitment

Setting an achievable target and owning that decision, communicating the rationale for your decision and having that rationale inform your priorities earns trust and rallies a team to deliver.

wall target by janerc on flickrIt’s the targets, stupid

Don’t set arbitrary targets. Don’t burden yourself with unnecessary risk, demotivate your developers and thoughtlessly constrain the value built into your software.

Do set meaningful targets. Take calculated risks, manage costs, partner with your developers and know what and when you need to deliver to your customers.

It’s not an estimate. The developer cannot assume your risk.

It’s not a commitment. You’ve got to earn that.

At the end of the day, the product owner is responsible for understanding the business climate, understanding the customer, describing and prioritizing the work, and managing the company’s investment to a successful outcome.