Planet SCM

Today I came across a little video about Don't be an asshole by Bob Sutton explaining the importance of people learning to be indifferent at times to things that cannot be changed, and ignore those things. It struck me because I tend to get irritated or frustrated about things that I don't like and I don't seem to be able to change.

More on the Don't be an asshole rule on his weblog.

In his weblog article Strong Opinions, Weakly Held, Bob Sutton writes about a psychological paradox that to move forward in knowledge and wisdom, we need

• A strong opinion to assure that we are inspired to find the best arguments to support the opinion, but also
• Not be attached to the opinion to avoid getting blind for evidence against it

At first this felt weird. At work, I like to either take a firm standpoint for my opinion or take no standpoint at all and listen to others. It often confuses people when I play Devil's Advocate and stick to my opinion for the sake of the discussion just to challenge it. In other situations, I seem unable to make up my mind and form a opinion.

In the end, it's all a matter of communication...

To me it is highly arguable whether software creation is an art. In the early days, the challenge of software was to find the most efficient or the most effective algorithms to crack a mathematical problem. Nowadays, most of the creative art has made place for crafted engineering: integrating existing concepts and technologies into new systems.

Nerds and wizkids, able to work in isolation and inventing the most unexpected solutions have been replaced by architects and engineers working together in efficient social structures to build and integrate predictable results in a predictable way. Beauty and cleverness have been replaced by control and productivity.

Did all the fun disappear then? No, it has changed. Instead of being a soloistic challenge (like athletics), software development has become a team challenge (like football). And instead of breaking world records time after time, the objective is to play in the champions league beating the competition. It requires completely different strategies and tactics. To me, being in a winning team is more fun than being better than everybody else.

Last week I had a meeting with a customer that is in the process of implementing a new configuration management system. We had a tough discussion about building in security measure to protect the system from malpractice of software developers.

Surprisingly, they were very much concerned about deliberate, intentional misbehaviour of their software developers. For them it was even more an issue than intentional, accidental faults. The argument was that intentional misbehaviour may be very difficult to detect because the engineers try to be extremely smart on that. The risk they are concerned about is that after delivery of those changes, the integrator may not discover problems in the system through the build and smoke test. So the problem is propagated to system level and may be even to the customer.

What they try to do is maximise the security mechanisms to make it is impossible for developers to bypass it. In my opinion, it is absolutely foolish to even try it. First, you will never outsmart those saboteurs and try it takes extreme costs and efforts. A better approach is to build in logging and detection mechanisms. Then, if someone runs in an unintentional malpractice you can build in protection mechanisms, but if someone deliverately hacks the system he should be warned first and fired next regardless of his other competences and knowledge level. It is better to spend the money on finding the right people and on try to secure the system against those terrorists.

What do you think we should do about it?

Although I don't really like reading books, I started in Behind Closed Doors of Johanna Rothman and Esther Derby. It really is not a book about management, but about working with people as a manager. Easy readable and for a slow reader as I am - especially with the distractions that I have while reading - my progress is reasonably fast.

The previous book I read so easily - and finished - is Peopleware by DeMarco, a classic in management books.

Both books are about people and working with people.

Update 15/3/2007:
I have read the second chapter. It certainly is not my favorite - in other words - I don't like it. It's about matching roles and people. It assumes an amount of freedom to mix and match that - at least in my work environment - seldom exists.

Update 18/3/2007:
The third chapter about building your team started familiar with jelling teams. I immediately felt the connection with Peopleware. It was convincing until the subject of feedback was touched. Especially ending the chapter with the option of firing someone ruins the whole atmosphere needed to build a team. Overall, I was left with a very disappointed feeling.

I am reading a lot about Second Life lately. Various companies are looking into it as a way to promote their and show their new products, even to have them tried out, yet withou really understanding or even visioning the business value that it might bring. I wonder what they are really looking for.

IBM for instance is planning to have meetings, lectures and trainings in Second Life. Recently Grady Booch announced that his virtual self is giving a virtual lecture in the virtual world. But I don't see my virtual self sitting in a virtual classroom looking at and listening to a virtual speaker and virtual peers. Not if there are non-virtual (first life) video conferencing applications available that show real people with real voices and, more over, real expressions. I don't see myself watching a movie sitting (virtually) in a virtual cinema - and sitting behind the computer in reality - if I can see the same movie in much better quality and performance using Media Player applications.
I don't even see my try out new Nike shoes just by looking how well they fit my avatar, if I can't try them on at my own real feet. Haven't you seen the fancy flash applications of cars, where they show intereriors, exteriors, engines, safety features, in-car entertainment systems. You don't need a complete virtual world where you can travel between islands to show those products.

Second Life is typically an application to build virtual communities: build social networks and interacting with people within your network. From that perspective it is nothing more - and nothing less - than an ordinary chatroom with a (3D) graphical interface.

IBM and other companies are going to invest in Second Life to explore the business potentials, but they hardly invested in exploring the potential of previous social networks. Take for instance the IBM DeveloperWorks "community": it's just a newpaper-like publication board with discussion forums. The community building primarily comes from the people who contribute to the discussion forum. Originally discussion forums were just Q&A; forums, where a user could post a question and many users posted answers to the question. But already in the Rational days there was the Rational Developer Network, a thriving community where people not only posted questions and answers, but also shared knowledge and experience. And not only on the product specifics, but also more general about professional interests, such a configuration management, process management, modeling, etcetera.

In 2003, Rational recognized the value of user communities. They formed a group volunteers (called Discussion Facilitators) to foster the user community. The social community would be a (low-cost) extension of the support service, and at the same time be a promotional instrument more powerful than the sales force could be. There were plans to create a real user community, where people feel the social connection and support. And then IBM took over and the focus was completely turned to sales. Rational lost its position as methodology leader, products lost their top class position and the community slowly degraded into a simple Q&A forum and website.

And now there is Second Life, a virtual world where social networks are primarily build around dating and gambling. Like many 3D MMORPG (games) I think there is a future to it, as an entertainment platform. Some people may get rich from Linden Dollars, but as a business platform I think it's just a hype.