With all due deference to The Best Web Page Ever here’s my daughter’s drawing of a Leprechaun.
Six residents of her six year old world:
I’m on the management side of the labor divide and yet I’ve never held a position my parents would consider a permanent job. To work these days is effectively to be employed at will.
I once had a senior executive tell me that my team was an experiment. To prove the value of development staff, we had to replace an outsource, maintain their legacy applications, and deliver a challenging new project. If we failed, next year’s budget would go to re-establishing the outsource.
We faced a hard date, skeptical clients and a steep learning curve but we had an honest leader, the means to succeed and a way of measuring it. All we had to do was execute.
I never felt more control over my fate.
Achievement rests in approaching each year as if it were an experiment. What accomplishment justifies my continued employment? What one thing should I do to materially advance the interests of my employer, our customers and/or my team? It’s the chart of that course that makes me show up in the morning and it’s sightings along the way that allow me to sleep at night.
I just upgraded my blog software reading this post on the WordPress development blog from March 2, 2007
If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.
Dave Pollard has an interesting post, From Simplistic Thinking to Embracing Complexity.
On attempts at knowledge creation that don’t engage employees and customers…
such systems presume ‘learned helplessness’ of customers and employees: The customer, the citizen, is often viewed as a mere, passive consumer of your organization’s products and so-called wisdom. The employee, likewise, is assumed to be ignorant, stupid and disinterested in the success of the organization beyond his/her own job. Most people don’t take kindly to having their intelligence insulted. And failure to engage customers and employees in co-producing the product is a tragic waste of great opportunity.
Learned helplessness. Yup, that about sums up what it’s like to work for a product owner who refuses to let the team invest in the vision of a product. Complexity and invention don’t lend themselves to command and control.
There are individuals like Dean Kamen with a singular genius for invention. Still he emphasizes the value of collaboration – of sensitivity to others and society. His F.I.R.S.T. foundation celebrates the whole individual engaged with others in a technical challenge and the ethic of Gracious Professionalism.
It’s a way of doing things that encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals and the community.
Agile software development values collective ownership. However, there is shared code and there is shared risk and shared reward. When a FIRST LEGO League Team wins, I’m sure it’s not a single 14 year old product owner who accepts the prize.
For a development team to contribute beyond the bounds of technical execution, i.e. “his/her own job”, product owners need to approach them
…through conversations, stories, and presenting the ‘problem’ to them so they can help you appreciate it better and then address it. – Dave Pollard
Embracing complexity is about engaging the whole person not just the coder. With the person comes life experience, passion, and imagination. As product owner, use your authority to break through indecision but avoid the desire to tell the team how to solve your problems. Describe what you are trying to accomplish and why it is important. Get the team in touch with the customer and let them help you.
The result will be more than the formulation of a single mind. It will be more what the customer needs and, perhaps, it will be unlike anything else out there.
When we set out to build consumer software, I pulled together sentiments from our CEO, lessons learned, and principles behind the Agile Manifesto into our own set of principles.
Since I’ve already received permission from my employer to publish it in a paper, Agile Practices and Innovation, I thought I’d include it here.
Oxygen Software Product Development Manifesto
Building consumer software is a joyous and daunting challenge. We, software developers, owe Oxygen and Oxygen’s customers every chance at success. We believe success springs from the following principles:
It’s all for the end user
The most important relationship is between us, the people building these tools and the women and men who are our customers. We must continually refine our products based on ever increasing knowledge of our customers.
Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software. — http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
People own their identity and information
We respect our customers. We respect their privacy. We believe people own their virtual selves.
To that end, we will never misuse data, we will always provide a way to keep personal information private, we will always give our customers a way to export their assets and remove their identity from our systems.
Each tool we build helps people do a specific thing better than anything else available
Build the best solution for a specific need felt by a broad range of women.
Build simple tools that are useful, elegant and fun and go from there
First build a specific solution and then abet our customers using that tool in ways we never imagined.
This is both a cause and a business
We must remember that this is a business proposition. As our products evolve, we need to understand the revenue models and targets. We need to help define and measure appropriate metrics. We need to do everything we can without sacrificing the other values in this manifesto to achieve the business aim of the company.
Gerry Laybourne is the product owner
If our most important relationship is with our customers, our most important collaboration is with our product owner. Gerry sets our priorities. She must embrace what we are doing. Our relationship must remain direct. The best way to convey information is face-to-face.
These tools spring first and foremost from Gerry’s imagination. Direct connection between Gerry’s vision and our team’s creative efforts leads to success.
We are inventors
We must imagine solutions outside current limitations and ask ourselves, “what of this can be done now”. We must build something never seen before that when handed to the right consumer feels inevitable and obvious.
We must engage creativity, empathy with our customers, resolute professionalism and an inspired sense of play.
If we don’t love our inventions, no one else will.
We have authority, we are responsible, we are accountable
We are a self-organizing team in the best spirit of Agility.
If we, the people doing the work, allow this project to drift from its founding principles it will fail – with consequences for all concerned. In the face of that possibility, we must have courage to speak truth to power.
Specific technologies and mediums are just tools. Get over them.
This project is about helping our customer get more out of computing and making a profit for our company. We must not let assumptions or affection for specific tools, technologies and platforms on anyone’s part distract us from our mission.
Admit failure and move on
Resources are limited. Set specific, measurable goals. Face the truth and course correct. Don’t knowingly waste time or effort. Don’t use lack of knowledge as an excuse for wasted time or effort.