What is the best strategy for an effective developer – innovation, imitation or integration? Should you introduce new creative solutions, adapt other people ideas or just integrate existing components?

Software Development is an exciting intellectual endeavor without physical barriers. It is easy to start innovating – come up with new ideas and quickly submerge into their implementation. And I don’t mean here fundamental breakthroughs. I consider as innovation building of any non-trivial solution that is not directly stemmed from Google search results, development resources or available examples. And certainly, I pose the dilemma – innovate or not innovate – to skillful developers who are quite capable to innovate and who enjoy meaningful creative work.

Discount Machine

Lets start from a tournament organized by Kevin Laland of the University of St Andrews to find out what strategy works best to gain maximum pay-off:

• innovation - a new behaviour randomly acquired by individual learning;
• observation - a new behaviour acquired by learning from others or imitation;
• exploitation - using a previously learned behaviour to gain pay-off.

The participant had to build a strategy that their virtual agents would use to decide between these options in a computer-generated world. The challenge was to create the strategy that generated the most successful agents.

Therefore, a tournament showed that the best strategy is keeping up-to-date by learning what others are doing and using their successful solutions most of the time.

Strategies

You have three main strategies for approaching a new problem in software development

1. Integrate into the system existing software product, component or service – commercial or open source (for example, Payment Gateway as PayPal, Blog Engine as WordPress, CMS as Drupal, UI Components as Telerik and so on)
2. Imitate good enough solutions and adapt to your problem (Architecture Patterns as MVC, available code examples and guidelines as MSDN, borrow ideas from blogs, open source projects, Starter Kits, SDK and so on)
3. Innovate and create new solutions or make significant improvements to existing approaches

	Integrate	Imitate	Innovate
Time to market	Fast, if effort to integrate with other system components is low	Slow, but predictable, if not many hidden pitfalls or adaptation problems are encountered	Unpredictable as any innovative work
Cost	Low, if components are reasonably priced and not much integration work needed	More expensive and depends on complexity and adaptation effort	Unpredictable
System integrity (with system architecture and environment)	Acceptable if new components don’t screw and over-complicate core architecture	Good, if developers adapt ideas to existing architecture	Solution is built to match core architecture and customer needs
Required Expertise	Not much specialized expertise is required, usually external support is available for integration	Good developers can effectively adopt good ideas that are explained well	High level expertise, creativity and specialized knowledge are required for good innovative solution
Control over code and future development	Little control and you are on mercy of external developers	Good control if ideas are applied well and not over-engineered	Full control
Competitive advantage and uniqueness	Not much for the standard solution that many can use	Depends on quality and creativity in adaptation	Innovation is an excellent opportunity to gain advantage
Maintenance, support and improving capabilities	Work is outsourced to dedicated external developers who fix, support and improve the product	Your effort is supported in original source of ideas if you are lucky	Completely your own effort
Learning curve, tacit knowledge, help	Usually supported by help, tutorials, training and community involvement	Partially supported by original source, however can drift far as the result of internal implementation	Should be covered by you to enable effective support and future development by existing and new developers

(*) Disclosure: I should confess that the table above has some assumptions. I assume that external components for integration have good quality, work as advertised and are backed by solid support and team . Also, I assume that internal developers involved in implementation have good skills and experience. They follow good practices and are motivated to do great job and know what they are doing. I fully realize that life is not simple, and my assumptions could be completely wrong and this would change the table and the whole game :)

• Improvement and simplification of the system design to make it easier to evolve and support
• Removing technical constraints and solving technical challenges to make the system faster, more responsive and reliable
• Introduction of important business features where no standard solutions exists
• Significant improvement of users experience
• Reducing cost of development and support

• Developing system features or properties that are not required
• Building alternatives for good available solutions (reinventing the wheel)
• Playing with interesting ideas without customer awareness

The Effective Way To Build Software System

1. Understand purpose of the system, essence of customer needs and desired outcome
2. Break down the system into components and research if
   1. standard solutions exist (for integration)
   2. implementation ideas exist (for imitation)
   3. innovation is required
3. Can you change needs and requirements? Transform customer needs and architecture ideas to minimize development effort
   1. by moving from innovation to imitation strategy
   2. by moving from imitation to integration strategy
4. Evaluate each component from the system and business perspective
   1. Should you avoid integration and use imitation if:
      • System integrity under the threat and the component is part of the system core
      • Control over code and future development is required
      • Competitive advantage and uniqueness are important
   2. Should you still go with innovation because of unresolved contradictions, challenging and unmet needs?
5. Build prototypes clearly separated from mainstream development to confirm selected strategy

Becoming an effective software developer

1. Systematically study other solutions in your area of specialization (at least a couple in a month – understand strengths, weaknesses, high-level architecture and interesting tricks)
2. Learn concepts and language of your business domain to be able to understand customers and shape their needs together
3. Enhance abilities to find and brainstorm alternatives (improve techniques, make them essential part of your process)
4. Become an expert in Google search and fast evaluation (no kidding, these skills become very important for any modern developer)
5. Master rapid prototyping, apply solutions in practice and seek for rapid feedback (answer in short time if proposed solution is good, learn and correct if you made a mistake)
6. Develop a holistic view and knowledge of the system, infrastructure and environment (understand subsystems, connections, integration options and trade-offs)
7. Keep up with latest software development trends, technologies and approaches (subscribe to blogs, magazines and other sources)

1. Achieve deep specialization in your core technical area and business domain (extensive experience and deep knowledge are great assets for innovator)
2. Continuously develop creativity and problem solving (the post about creative problem solving)
3. Enhance architecture and fundamental programming expertise based on own practice and ideas from others
4. Master Evolutionary and Domain Driven Design

• Improving relationship
• Flying to space to be the first man on Mars
• Overweighting and health problems
• Winning bodybuilding or beauty contest.
• Procrastination
• Learning new technology
• Making more money
• Building next Facebook or Twitter
• Raising kids
• Boosting career growth
• Becoming Olympic champion or billionaire
• Making the world a better place
• Planning a dream vacation
• Seeking for happiness…

We often are inconsistent in solving problems and cannot find a good solution. This post focus on effective and creative problem solving by offering systematic approach and wide range of techniques.

Beginning

There are four main elements of Creative Problem Solving:

1. Problem - any question or matter involving doubt, uncertainty or difficulty
2. Solution - set of actions that solves a problem
3. You – your knowledge, beliefs, emotions and abilities
4. Context -forces, people and environment

And there are seven strategies:

1. Knowing - you know how to solve the problem in practice
2. Copying – copy and adapt working solutions
3. Logic - follow reasoning and step-by-step approach to find a solution
4. Lateral thinking - solving problems through an indirect and creative approach
5. Psychology - use intuition and subconscious to pop a solution
6. Dialogue - engage brains of other people
7. Trial and errors - make guess, verify and refine by experiments

Before you start finding a solution, you should board the problem – understand and accept it.

Boarding a problem in 3 steps

Step 1. What is the core of the problem?

• Essentials - What are symptoms, facts, key points, players, context?
• Root Conflict - Why is this a problem? What is the core of a problem? What is not a problem? Ask 5 whys
• Clarity - What is still unknown and unclear? Do I need more information?

• Feasible - Is the problem real and you can solve it? Continue by asking critical questions about the problem
  • Is it logical? Does the problem make sense for the rational part of my brain?
  • Is it subjective? Is it possible that problem exist only in my mind?
  • What are emotions and feelings? How do they contribute to my perception of the problem?
  • Is the problem based on hard facts and proven information?
• Fit - Why is it necessary to solve? Should I really solve this problem based on my
  • needs
  • priorities
  • values and principles
  • resources (time / money)
  • potential benefits / risks?

• Purpose - what is the purpose of solving the problem?
• Stretch - should I solve bigger problem?
• Squeeze - should I solve only part of the problem?
• Model - what are elements and parameters of the problem? What are forces?
• Question - use CIA Phoenix checklist of problem solving questions

Ideal solution

• Find contradictions that can be resolved - I want more money, but also want to work less and impossible - I have to be in two places in the same time. Use them as a creative stimulus to define an ideal solution.
• Understand when you can stop, what is good enough outcome and how much time, energy and money you are willing to spend on resolving a problem
• What are potential harms and cost of the solution?

Knowing

1. Is the situation same?
2. Should you improve or change something from your previous solution?
3. Can you come up with better alternatives?

Copying

1. Can you trust sources? Do they provide full unbiased information?
2. Do you pay attention not only to glorious outcomes of the solution, but also to problems?
3. Can you use this solution for your specific problem, situation and abilities?

Logic

Reorganize - break down the problem into elements or parameters and manipulate them. You can use SCAMPER method defined by Bob Eberle. (Example: a problem with failing relationship)

• S - Substitute - components, materials, people
  • substitute something in your behavior or find another partner
• C - Combine - mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate
  • start doing some things together
• A - Adapt - alter, change function, use part of another element
  • change your home responsibilities
• M - Modify - increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modify attributes (e.g. colour)
  • communicate more often, change your tone
• P - Put to another use
  • use your partner as a tennis or chess opponent, engage as an assistant in fishing
• E - Eliminate - remove elements, simplify, reduce to core functionality
  • separate or stop doing things that annoy your partner
• R - Reverse - turn inside out or upside down
  • say opposite to what you said before

• Think about a specific topic you want to cover. Find out how people start blogs in general, what works and what are common pitfalls. Apply to your topic and situation to grow successful blog.

Analyze Variations (Example: Develop and promote new Content Management System)

1. Parameters of a problem - list variations, combine differently
   • cost, time, features, people, quality, vendors, etc; time vs features, in-house vs outsourcing, quality vs speed
2. Attributes list - list attributes of the object (or problem) and try to improve them (Attributes analysis, Morphological Analysis)
   • architecture, design, performance, scalability, security, reusability, networking
3. Matrix - create related keywords in main areas, mix and match keywords to form new ideas (Leonardo da Vinci Ideabox)
   • solutions (blog, company website, e-commerce, news, social connections), needs (inform, advertise, sell, support), markets (individuals, companies, non-profit, schools, small social groups), technologies (web, video, mobile, aggregation), services (hosting, installation, support, training). For example, what could be opportunity in combination: blog + inform + schools + video + hosting

Change Context / Process / Forces (Example: Career advance)

1. Force field analysis - maximize positive forces, minimize negative (Force-Field Analysis)
   • find how to use your strengths more and avoid negative impact of weaknesses
2. Substitute rules, principles, people, places
   • change job responsibilities or job itself
3. Anti-action - compensate harmful effect by specific action
   • minimize overtime or uninteresting work by changing how you accept your tasks
4. Preliminary action - pre-arrange or change problem context in advance
   • build consensus with potential opponents before important meeting
5. Theory of Constraints - find the worst bottleneck and improve until it is no longer a bottleneck, continue with the next bottleneck (Theory of Constraints)
   • find what are limiting factors of your growth, work on reducing their impact and increase your abilities and potential
6. Eliminate waste
   • eliminate wasteful activities at work to boost your productivity
7. Lemonade from Lemons - use waste or harmful effect to achieve a positive effect
   • learn from your mistakes and use them to improve and become better next time. As Friedrich Nietzsche said: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
8. Feedback - introduce or increase feedback to improve action or process
   • seek for feedback and objective evaluation of your performance to advance faster by fixing your shortcomings

Explore future scenarios - project future scenarios to find unexpected opportunities (Alternative Scenarios) (Example: Deciding where to invest money)
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it” – Alan Kay

1. Identify forces
   • identify current economic forces and your personal situation
2. Come up with 4-5 scenarios - good and bad
   • what could happen in the future with both economic and you?
3. Search big opportunities in each
   • find how you can benefit from investment in each of scenario

Lateral thinking (Creative Spark)

Challenge assumptions, break away from obvious perspectives (Assumption Busting) (Example: Raising troubled teenager)
“The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them. “ – Albert Einstein

1. Expose and challenge all assumptions
   • challenge your beliefs about role of a parent
2. Reverse problem in some way (Reversal)
   • praise for something you was punishing before
3. Paradox - opposites exist simultaneously (True and False)
   • accept that you and your teenager are both right about controversial topic. Try to negotiate from this position
4. Provocation - wishful thinking, thought experiments
   • unleash your imagination, go for crazy ideas about solving a problem
5. Changing viewpoint - think from different perspective (Six hats)
   • imagine that you are a bird or live in another time. How would you resolve your relations with kid?
6. Finally, challenge any part of the problem – ask why for anything

Force Associations (Example: Starting your own software business)
“Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected” – William Plomer

1. Random keywords - select any word from dictionary and try to connect to your problem (Random Words)
   • For example, how a tree can be related to your new business?
2. Words of great thinkers - use their quotes and wisdom to associate with a problem.
   • For example, how can Oscar Wilde’s quote: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken” helps with business ideas?
3. Free associating with common attributes - select 12 attributes, choose random 2, consider separating and combined (Combinatory Play)
   • break down into areas – finances, sales, development, clients, technology, usability, etc. Start pairing randomly
4. Metaphors - similarities and connections of your problem with other distant area
   • How analogies of railroad or tropical forest can help with business idea
5. Hieroglyphs - use Egyptian hieroglyphs to associate with your problem
   • arrange randomly hieroglyphs from The Book of Dead to find clues for creating business

Visual clues (Example: Designing web user interface for the new complex domain)

1. Diagram to explore, organize and analyze (Lotus Blossom, Mind Map, Concept Fan)
   1. Explore – search for new areas that can be related to the problem
   2. Organize – put together as one picture what you know about the problem
   3. Analyze – go deep into a problem to find missing details and relations
   • Draw these 3 types of diagram for web site and business domain: put web site purpose in the center, start drawing branches for big ideas and aspects, branch for smaller and so on
     
2. Draw and link abstract symbols for attributes
   • create symbols for web patterns and business concepts, shuffle and find ideas in random associations
3. Drawing - draw anything that can be related to your problem; lets your subconscious drive your hand (Doodling)
   • just draw any screen ideas

Psychological tools

“Everything you can imagine is real.” – Pablo Picasso

Use intuition and subconscious to find answers. Our subconscious is a large scene where conscious thought is a spotlight. Try to elicit ideas from these dark corners of the most powerful part of your mind. (Example: Finding new kicking-ass website idea)

1. Intuition - ask and listen to your intuition
   • come up with website ideas without thinking
2. Incubation - best ideas come than you don’t expect them, just don’t miss them
   • deeply dig into a problem, put into your mind and forget, and probably soon you will jump from the bath and run to the street screaming ‘eureka!’
3. Fantasies - unleash unreal or crazy questions, suspend judgment and answer them (Crazy Ideas)
   • what if you build site for aliens? now you can think about usability for complete dummies, space design, navigation as a star system, etc.
4. Dreaming - capture ideas from dreams
   • set questions before you sleep, try to recover answers from dreams immediately after you wake up
5. Drink beer - to slip into different mind state. I don’t suggest becoming drunk or use something stronger or illegal :)
   • drink and start thinking about website, don’t foget to record your thoughts early enough :)
6. Surrealistic images - find association of hypnogogic imagery with your challenges
   • relax, quiet mind and eyes, become almost unconscious- record experiences immediately after they occur
7. Guided imaginary scenarios to find ideas in unexpected places (Imaginary Excursion)
   • choose scenario (e.g. going to camp and lost in the forest) and while you experience the journey in the head, search for clues
8. Psychosynthesis - spiritual advisers (Role-playing)
   • invite Bill Gates, Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx to talk with you inside your head about the kicking-ass website
9. Streaming - writing out what is in your mind to associate later with the problem
   • hide in a comfortable place and start writing – smart thoughts or gibberish. Find how it could be related to the new website later.

Dialogue

1. Talk with strangers
   • ask about vacation ideas people you don’t communicate often and you’ll get plenty of new ideas
2. Brainstorming - exchange ideas and suggestions without judgment, evaluate and revise ideas later (KJ Brainstorming)
   • ask group of people to generate as many as possible vacation ideas without discussion
3. Brainwriting - parallel generation of ideas in silence (index cards); exchange and develop each other ideas in turn (Brainwriting)
   • everybody in group writes vacation idea on card, give to the next in circle who continue refining this idea
4. Survey - collect ideas from large group of people (Crawford Slip Method, Delphi method)
   • post survey (e.g. Facebook or surveymonkey.com) for vacation ideas
5. Storyboarding - put ideas on the wall as a group works out problems
   • post vacation ideas on the wall and let anybody to contribute (add or extend idea)
6. Socratic dialogue - have a conversation with a smart person and probe various dimensions of thinking: purpose, evidence, reasons, data, claims, beliefs, interpretations, deductions, conclusions, the implications and consequences of thought, response to alternative thinking from contrasting points of view, and so on.
   

Trials and Errors

Solving a problem by trial and error is an expensive, but reliable way to find a solution. In science it called scientific method. Most scientific discoveries are done using this method. (Example: Becoming happy)

1. Ask a Question
   • form a problem statement – what is happiness for you?
2. Do Background Research
   • learn what other people think about happiness
3. Construct a Hypothesis
   • what could make you happy?
4. Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment
   • try your ideas in practice
5. Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion
   • are you happy now? should you change a hypothesis and start again?
     
6. Communicate Your Results
   • share your results – help other people to become happier

Summary

Your life success depends on your ability to choose right problems and solve them. Do not give up or settle for an ineffective solution. Use the power of your mind to creatively solve problems the best way possible. Control your life.

“He is able who thinks he is able” -Buddha

References

• Thinkertoys: a handbook of creative-thinking techniques, Michael Michalko
• http://www.mycoted.com/Category:Creativity_Techniques
• http://creatingminds.org/
• http://www.mindtools.com/pages/main/newMN_CT.htm
• http://www.creativethinking.net/WP03_Techniques.htm

Creativity can be developed and improved. Here is my Theory of Creativity in 3 parts

1. Prepared Mind – prepare your mind to be creative
2. Right challenges – know what challenges you should embrace now
3. Creative ideas – use powerful techniques to get new ideas

I. Prepared Mind

What should be the qualities of the mind to get great ideas and solve complex problems?

1. Knowledgeable - know problem domain and other fields that can inspire new ideas
2. Flexible - able to vary and adapt the ways of thinking
3. Forceful - eager and resolute to find a solution
4. Easy - clear and free from stress and fear
5. Playful - can surprise and break rules
6. Intuitive - come up with ideas without thinking and reasoning

1. Feed Head – make mind knowledgeable

Organize regular information channels for delivering intellectual food for your head and push your mind outside of familiar boundaries.

Build optimal flow of information in areas of your interests

• Subscribe to blogs, magazines, podcasts, rss, twitter, etc.
  • Balance broad (e.g. techcrunch.com, digg.com) and deep sources (specialized sites or thought leaders blogs).
  • Group online sources (rss, blogs, twitter) based on frequency of updates and value to avoid missing valuable posts in the pile of shallow news.
  • Periodically review existing sources and re-arrange or remove them to keep the feed optimal for your current needs

• Scan for new books, blogs and articles
  • amazon.com is the best site to find great new books
  • Collect references and mentions from trusted sources
  • Use sites like www.stumbleupon.com to discover new blogs and articles

Probe other fields – regularly try new fields for potentially useful information, interesting ideas and new perspectives.

Start with general fields – history, art, economy, philosophy, management, psychology, physics, engineering and many others. Dig deeper if you find the field interesting.

• Subscribe to magazine and websites with interesting articles in wide range of fields targeted for general audience (e.g. New Scientist for science fields)
• Search for highly ranked sources that are interesting and deliver good overview of the selected field.
• Again, amazon.com and Google search are good starting points
• Connect new information to your field – approaches, concepts, problems, solutions

Content analysis – keep your hand on pulse of your society and industry – general trends, key events, statistics, buzzes, news. All this information can be a valuable source for understanding present and future.

Take notes – write down facts, thoughts and problems that can give rise to the new ideas, solutions or topics for future investigation

• Find good tools to capture your thoughts – otherwise you can lose great thoughts and ideas forever
• Maintain Brainbank – collection of idea starters (undeveloped idea briefs) for specific topics in designated virtual or physical folders

2. Prime Your Mind – make it flexible

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” – Buddha

Train mind to be creative, flexible and open to the world. Do not allow to stale – shake and exercise it every day with

• daily idea quote – come up with few ideas every day for any aspect of your professional, public or private life.
• routines - change what you do and how you do from time to time
• experiences – strive for new experiences – travel, engage in the new activities, meet new people and attend new events
• thinking techniques – improve how you think, always look for new approaches

3. Explorer’s Drive (Energy, Courage, Self-Belief) – make mind forceful

“The wind and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.” - Edward Gibbon

• better ideas exist
• you will find them
• you can make mistakes

4. Clear Mind – make it easy

5. Fun, Play, Being a Child – make your mind playful

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” – Pablo Picasso

Try to

• have fun, play
• forget dogmas, break rules
• be curious and spontaneous
• be silly and illogical

Encourage your inner child and don’t let him to grow up :)

6. Train gut feeling – make mind intuitive

• know how to attack the problem without know how you know
• relate problems in one field to unrelated another field
• recognize the crux of the problem
• see general solution to the problem
• recognize solution because it feels right

(by George Turin, of the University of California)

II. Right Challenges

“He who knows when he can fight and when he cannot will be victorious” - Sun Tzu

And still, creative person with prepared mind can waste talent and energy on solving irrelevant problems. You should focus on the most important problems instead of stretching yourself to fight any challenge.

• Select few important battles that you can win instead of squandering your energy in useless fights.
• Actively prioritize, select or reject your outstanding challenges.
• Select challenges that you are ready to accept and come up with ideas and solutions.
• Focus and work the challenge

1. Know your problems

Regularly,

• keep the journal of interesting problems – problems you want to solve
• see waste – useless activities and commitments in your life. Streamline your life to have more time for important stuff.
• measure key parameters of your life – health, happiness, career, achievements, wealth. Small changes that you barely notice could lead to serious future problems.
• go and see (Genchi Genbutsu) – if you feel that something is wrong, do not hide, but understand and face the challenge
• ask 5 whys (Kaizen) – find root causes of your problems. Do not discard problems as impossible to solve – convert into challenges and opportunities for making your life better.

(the list is inspired by Toyota Production System)

2. Accept challenge

“Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” - Will Rogers

The last step before working on the challenge is to accept it. We have so many distraction in our life, we procrastinate and keep postponing actions. You have to make a serious deal with yourself to succeed with challenges. Accept the challenge means to commit yourself to work on it. Period. Commit, focus and work the problem, otherwise your attempts will be in vain.

Questions to assess your mind preparation

1. Do I have good sources of information and adequate knowledge?
2. Do I have broad perspective of various fields?
3. Am I flexible and open-minded?
4. Do I have drive, energy and courage to embrace challenges?
5. Is my mind clear and relaxed?
6. Am I playful, curious and free of dogmas?
7. Does my intuition work well?
8. Do I know my challenges?
9. Do I accept them?

Action Plan

If your mind is prepared, you are ready to use your creativity for solving challenges. The next post will equip you with powerful techniques for getting new ideas.

Resources

Thinkertoys: a handbook of creative-thinking techniques, Michael Michalko
How to get ideas, Jack Foster

You have 2 options to communicate your ideas:

Why should a programmer care about communicating ideas to other people?

It is true, the primary job of a programmer is to feed computers with ideas. But you cannot quietly hide behind a computer forever. You have to deal with other people:

1. Make ideas connected with people, not abstractions. Tell them about Joe who was frustrated with our search or Jenny who was so excited with our website new features.
2. Appeal to the senses of responsibility and professional dignity – make people conscience aware about quality problems, system security concerns, low user satisfaction
3. Use self-interest – what is in this idea for the person: survival in the company, career growth opportunity or interesting challenge
4. Appeal to identity – people care about their image and status: “what could someone like me do in this situation?” A good developer not only cares about working code, but also about usability of a solution.

His main points:

• Ideas. The best ideas are not coming from users and they are bad in providing feedback (iPod). So, there is no point to release early to get their opinion and ideas.
• Features. Minimal early set of features could be unattractive for majority of users and will turn them down for future use (Apple Newton)
• Quality. A buggy and unpolished product could ruin your reputations
• Architecture. An incorrect initial architecture creates waste and serious problems down the road (Netscape, Twitter)

Therefore, Jason against releasing early and often. I don’t agree.

My answer: it depends!

Evolution is the process of small frequent changes to improve and adapt to environment.

One of my posts reviewed how software team should select the best strategy: evolution, revolution or retreat. Another post compared evolution to revolution. Evolution (and aligned core Agile principles) requires early and frequent releases. Revolution pushes innovative product that should disrupt market. Requirements for a revolutionary product ideas are much higher, because it should overcome resistance, create new niche and gain acceptance of the new paradigm. Therefore, revolutionary product should be well thought and prepared to hit the mark. I should note that revolution often becomes evolution after initial release.

Decision factors for selecting strategy Release Early, Release Often (evolutionary):

1. People. Are they highly talented and capable to come up with great ideas from the beginning ? Or should they learn and understand better the problem space, release incrementally and get more feedback from the users for initial assumptions?
2. The Game. Is the problem (software requirements and business domain) unclear, complex, challenging and require a lot of trials and feedback? Or is the problem space well known and team already have good experience with it and can release a great product from the first attempt?
3. The Dynamic. Is the team under a pressure to release a product early, catch at the market opportunity or help a company to survive? Or do they have luxury to take a time for designing properly and release a polished product?

There are some cases where long release cycles make sense for the company:

1. A company has deep expertise and hired highly talented and experienced people who know how to build successful product.
2. A company have enough funds and time to sustain long development and tolerant to inefficiency because incorrect assumptions or lack of feedback.
3. Customers have low tolerance for risk and the software is mission- or life-critical.

However, I expect that for many software teams the most optimal strategy will be evolutionary - Release Early, Release Often.

I partially agree with Jason that most users will not help with ideas or provide meaningful feedback. Also it is a bad idea to ship buggy, unfinished and useless product. But a team could get more than user feedback from early and frequent releases:

• release! This is a huge and most important criteria of development success – the product is releasable and working
• integrate and put the product pieces together, which is almost impossible to replicate in the test environment
• practically experience work of the live product - infrastructure and production problems, performance, scalability and user interactions in their environment. These problems can radically change the view on architecture
• reality check - learn from how people use the product: validate initial assumptions, collect praises and complains, real usage patterns, statistics and maybe even some ideas from users :)
• emergence of the new ideas and process improvement after experiencing product in the wild live environment

A software company should avoid treating users as guinea pigs for their early experiments, but nothing can beat practical benefits of releasing code and learning from it.

“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.” — Yogi Berra

Referenced post: Releasing Early Is Not Always Good? Heresy! by Jason Cohen @onstartups.com

Anxiety started to penetrate our souls. We know what is wrong: our team is short of people, we have too many commitments, our code is becoming a big mess, new technology and our new software version makes something bad with servers. A snowball of different problems makes us stressed, distracted and incapable of productive work.

What could our manager do next?

1. Distrust. Become a dictator, make own decisions including hiring external consultants to recommend what to do or even replace us. However,
   • we are good programmers and know our business well – the problem is not in lack of skill and knowledge
   • external people will take a lot of time to understand the system and they will have different motivation and won’t care about the long-term success
   • people will be demotivated and the manager cannot make effective decisions without active team involvement
2. Faith. Give to team the full power to fix a problems and make own decisions in hope that smart people, motivation and technical expertise will do magic. However,
   • fresh outlook and thinking out of box are hard when a team immersed for a long time into difficult situation
   • a team possibly doesn’t have understanding and control over external forces – management, customers, finances
   • changing of reality is tough (especially in people heads) and requires more than technical experience

There is a third way. Place improvement practices in the core of development process. Make self-improvement inevitable and required for any activity. Do it every day.

Toyota Way is the best example of large-scale reliable self-improvement process. It focuses on eliminating waste, solving problems at root cause and making right decisions. Toyota Way reduces problems, increases internal efficiency and makes a company successful. This is the best receipt for coming out of crisis.

Targets:

• Problems - emergencies, fires that require immediate fix: bugs, server crushes, deadline slips

• Waste - inefficient and non-value adding activities: waiting, misinformation, stress

• Challenges - adaptation to external forces (market, competitors, customers, society): new trends and technologies, changes in users expectations for user interface and functionality

Practices to see waste and stop to fix problems

1. Seeing waste

The team and managers should learn to see targets – real problems and waste. Otherwise improvements will be wild shots in the dark.

There are many targets in software development:

• stressed people – reduced energy, less productivity, more mistakes
• waiting – delays, tools / system problems and downtime, capacity bottlenecks (waiting for results of other people work)
• over-engineering – producing features and complicate design without real need
• unfinished work – functionality not used in a live system, probably still in design or under development or simply discarded (but not removed)
• defects – complete waste of time and money
• unused creativity – loosing time, ideas, skills, improvements and learning by not engaging or listening to your employees
• inadequate information – unclear, misleading or simply wrong information that causes useless activity and leads to rework at the end

• over-processing – taking unneeded steps to build software because of poor process and system design, overhead, bureaucracy, compliance, cumbersome tools
• motion – how much effort to get necessary information, access systems or use tools
• multi-tasking – losing time to switch between projects, tasks or different activities

2. Jidoka - stop to fix the problem to get quality right the first time

It is not enough to see your targets. The Team should carry commandment to shoot targets immediately. Otherwise the best intentions will be buried under growing avalanche of problems.

How to stop:

• quality for the customer drives all the processes – prevents temporary patches and bad for quality decisions
• low tolerance for quality problems and immediate detection are core work principle
• use Andon – a system to signal for help, notify about a problem and stop the process

• build in tools and process capabilities of detecting problems and stopping itself
• use all modern QA methods available
• managers encourage stops to fix problems and support implementation of counter measures

Making Decisions

“Make decisions slowly by consensus and thoroughly considering all options, implement rapidly.“ – Toyota Way

Even knowing problems and committed to solve them, the Team should make right decisions how to do it.

Make decisions slowly

1. Go and See (Genchi Genbutsu)
2. Understand underlying causes (Kaizen)
3. Broadly consider alternative solutions and develop a detailed rationale for preferred solution delaying certain decision as long as possible (Set-Based concurrent engineering)
4. Build consensus within a team and partners where group decision is preferred (while management can step in if consensus is not achieved)
5. Use very efficient communication devices – preferably one side of one sheet of paper

Implement rapidly

1. Put in place solutions and counter measures.
2. Evaluate the results
3. Standardize if solution is effective.

Practices to Eliminate Waste and Solve Problems

3. Genchi Genbutsu – go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand situation

How often do we jump to conclusion based on partial information, vague assumptions and what other people say? Information creates reality in your mind. This reality is a base for your decisions. So, you and the Team should get right information to make right decisions:

• observe situation with blank mind
• avoid assumptions and preconceptions
• use personally verified information

In short, base decisions on what really is going on

4. Kaizen (5 why’s) -continuous learning and improvement

“We view errors as opportunities for learning” – Toyota Way
The Team should find the root causes of the problems. Kaizen helps to find the root cause by repeatedly asking why the problem occurs.

Example of Kaizen
Problem: there are persistent javascript errors on a live site

1. Why? A developer didn’t build correct logic for complex web UI components interaction
2. Why? A developer built own solution without guidance and enough experience in this area
3. Why? A team expert didn’t tell about existing proven solutions, didn’t help and didn’t share knowledge
4. Why? The team is under stress, over-committed and don’t have time to communicate
5. Why? Managers accept too much work without consulting with development team
6. Why? you can continue…

Kaizen forces us to overcome desire to find a first convenient explanation and patch problems without fixing root causes. By ruthlessly applying this practice, we get deeper insight into reality and better learn our product, processes, people, environment and tools. Kaizen is a core practice to see waste, solve problems and improve process.

To avoid forgetting learning from Kaizen, it is important to standardize the improved process and make it a base for further improvements.

Practices to Support Flow

5. Standards – best you know today which is to be improved tomorrow

Standardized work is easier, cheaper and faster – stable repeatable methods can maintain predictability, high productivity and support quality.
Effective standards are not coming from theories, they come from

• best practices
• accumulated learnings and individual experience
• lessons from applying existing standards

The Team should try to use standards in many areas: project phases and activities; development practices; architecture and design approaches; code conventions; tools; programming techniques; libraries and third-party code; reuse of components and solutions; testing and so on.
Standardization in software development is a controversial topic – some theorists want to bring programming closer to standard-dominated engineering, practitioners are keen to reduce standardization to minimum promoting creativity and self-organization. In the rigid interpretation, standards are “must to follow” rules for any situation, in other interpretation standards are well defined steps and guidelines highly recommended for specific context. I support the latter definition. A productive team should have standards in place to focus on customer needs instead of fighting with the same puzzles and problems over and over again.

The system of standards shouldn’t be a heavy bureaucratic conduit, but a light and fluid book of knowledge. The book that contains most helpful and important rules and checklists. Standards will be effective if they are minimal, reviewed often (Kaizen) and followed by every team member.

6. Reliable thoroughly tested technology

The Team should be conservative with new technologies. Software development and IT thrive on change and innovation. However, Toyota Way suggests to be conservative in adapting technology and considers stability and reliability of operations as much more important goal than keeping on the cutting edge of technology.

Considerations for using technology

• primary goal is to improve flow and support people, process and values.
• process is driven by business, not technology concerns; software and tools do not eliminate themselves waste
• technology is visual and intuitive – people can use it correctly and effectively

• process manually before adapting technology to support the process – understand what problems it solves and how technology could help
• important: people / processes are easy to Kaizen, machines are difficult

Adopting new technology:

• new technology is unreliable and difficult to standardize, therefore it endangers flow
• proven process takes precedence over new and untested technology
• conduct actual tests before adapting new technology
• reject technology if it conflicts with culture or might disrupt stability, reliability and predictability

In the same time encourage people to consider new technologies while looking into new approaches. If technology improves process and flow – quickly implement after thorough testing.

7. Visual Controls

The Team should have clear status of information. Visual controls can convey complex information in fast and efficient for our brains way. We can use controls as a user story board; status of projects, servers or code build; burn down charts and others.
Simple visual indicators help people determine immediately whether they are deviating from the standards, provide quick gist of situation and direction for solving problems.

• use simple and most important indicators

• than provide clear picture for decisions and what to do next
• reduce reports to one screen / piece of paper even for the most important decisions

People, leaders and teams

8. People

People who build software are the people who should improve the process. They are directly involved and have first-hand experience of problems and waste.

Toyota Way expects that each team member is a problem solver and values job experience more than theoretical knowledge. The Team will beat any external consultants and find better way to work if people are open about problems and eager to find good solutions.

9. Leaders

The Team desperately needs strong leaders to build great products to overcome problems. Toyota grows leaders within who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy and must understand the daily work in great details

Chief Engineer is a key person in Toyota projects.:

• blessed by top management
• has control over project
• exceptional engineer
• critical link: between engineers and customer satisfaction
• coach for other engineers
• focus on concepts first, technicalities later

Chief Engineer concept is an excellent example for software technical leadership. A software team leader often lacks authority or makes too technical decisions without good understanding of customer needs.

10. Teams

The Team should be diverse and capable of solving wide range of problems. Toyota builds cross functional product teams, which

• use integrative decision making
• fast and accurate in implementation
• enhance process and flow by solving difficult technological problems

Software developers and their leaders are foundation of success in any project. Management, process and technology can only support them. And anyway, the process is as good as people follow it. Therefore, it is important to make software teams a key player in process improvements – they know problems, they understand work and they are capable to find good solutions.

Using Toyota Way

Can The Team revert a situation and win? Can it build the optimal process and expertise for fast development of high quality and low cost solutions?

This post shows the most effective option – build continuously improving process into the heart of development. The process that focuses on quality, eliminates waste and fixes problems at root cause. I believe this approach is a foundation of long term success. Your managers and company would love it!

A software project is a creative, unique and therefore unpredictable endeavor. We are not building the same thing over and over again, but solve new problems, address increasing demands and use perpetually changing technologies. Under these conditions, people – smart, creative and productive – are the most important factor of success . Software development process can only support and compliment these people, but it cannot guarantee success alone and make the factor of people negligible.

But, business wants predictable, reliable and successful results. I bet they don’t want to be at mercy how cards are shuffled in their talented development team. The answer is in establishing a process that increases chances of success and aligned with present nature of software development (unpredictable, empirical and heavily dependent on people).

The Toyota Way can be a great example that worth to learn. Toyota evolved from a small looming equipment shop to the largest car manufacturing company. The main foundation of successful growth is the system of few core principles that enables best quality, high productivity, lowest cost, shortest time and long-term success.

Agile and Lean Software Development adopted some practices from Toyota. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit  (by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck) is an excellent book that review Lean practices and principles in details. This post focuses more on philosophy and the system of practices as a whole that can turn software development team into a smart reliable machine.

1. Value

Why customer will pay money for your product? How does your company creates value?

All we are doing is looking at the time line from the moment the customer give us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the non-value-added wastes.

- Taiichi Ohno, founder of TPS

The only thing that adds value in software development is transformation of information and code into what customer wants. It is very important for software team to know how does it create value for customers. Or simply, decrypt the formula:
Customer (needs) -> Cash (delivered software)

Software Development Value Stream
Problems, needs and ideas are translated into units of development – functionality, user experience (interface, interactions, usability) and system qualities (performance, reliability, security, etc). A software development team transforms these pieces of requirements into a computer system using value-added and many not-so-value-added actions.

The ultimate goal of Toyota Way is to eliminate non-value-added activities while keeping the best quality of the product.

2. Flow

What is the process of creating value in your company?

Properties of the optimal flow for software development:

• cut back to zero the amount of time that any unit of work is sitting idle or waiting for somebody to work on it
• move design, code and information fast, link processes and people together that problems surface right away

One-piece flow
The most effective flow is one-piece flow – a customer need is immediately converted into a delivered software solution. In the same time this is the most demanding flow: a customer, designers, developers, testers and system administrators should be dedicated to the project, immediately available and work as one team together until the need is implemented in a live system.

One-piece flow has significant benefits (if it is implemented right):

• Quality - defects detected quickly; close proximity and connections ensure that necessary information is available immediately and important details are not missing; problems are solved quickly
• Flexibility - flexibility to respond and do what customer really wants in real time
• Productivity - the team engaged in high value added continuous work
• Morale - immediate results of work bring sense of accomplishment and job satisfaction
• Cost - lean production with minimal waste

However, in reality one-piece flow is difficult to achieve in many projects:

• a customer is not engaged all the time
• complex business domain requires analysis and preparation before development can start
• project activities involve people with different skills that are not available immediately
• deployment of mission-critical systems demands intensive testing and scheduling

• management, marketing, end-user expect specific time-lines, features and support

• and so on

Toyota uses two additional principles to overcome challenges of one-piece flow: pull systems and leveling out the workload.
However, Toyota Way says: “Flow where you can, pull where you must“. The big challenging goal is to turn eventually all the processes into one-piece flow.

Pull system (Kanban)
Kanban is a signaling system to trigger action. It adds to flow small buffers pulled by customer demand. Kanban allows optimal use of people and natural breaks in processes.

Agile iterations and Scrum sprints are close to Kanban ideas. A team pulls new user stories every time-boxed iteration from the backlog to design, implement, test and deploy within the same iteration.

However, it is not classical Kanban. An original idea would be to pull small batches of user stories for development after a team has finished a current batch (not at the end of fixed time iteration). In parallel, QA pulls implemented user stories for testing and so on. A customer can continue preparing next batches of work based on their priority of needs.

Main ideas

• provide dependent down stream teams with what they want, when they want and in amount they want
• just-in-time – started by high priority needs
• minimize work-in-progress and untested code
• frequently push what a customer can use right away
• be responsive to day-by-day shifts in demand instead of relaying on long-term schedules

Kanban is effective way to synchronize people and teams work without bringing them into continuous flow, where they should be always ready for the next unit of work.

Level Out the Workload (Heijunka)
The main idea of Heijunka is to level production by volume and activities mix.

• it is not built around actual flow of customer orders
• workload is leveled for the period considering previous history and scheduled projects

In software development workload could be leveled and scheduled when people could make reliable guess for what is expected. It is different from Kanban that works as just-in-time system adapting to the current workload.

Good candidates for Heijunka are

• standard procedures (automated testing, performance testing, deployment)
• recurring events (meetings, planning, demo, code reviews)

• scheduled tasks for people with limited availability (external consultants, customers, management)

• tasks with high confidence in estimation, usually done many times before (initial requirement exploration, design mockups, security audit, training new team members, reusing components and solutions)

Benefits:

• predictability and active planning

• balanced use of people, ability to schedule their involvement

• smoother demand on customers, shared resources and contractors

Toyota Way is focused on eliminating waste of non-value added work (Muda). Heijunka eliminates two additional types of waste:

• unevenness in project schedule (Mura)
• overburden of people and systems (Muri)

Building your own flow

These three approaches can help you to build most optimal flow. Consider cons and pros:

One-piece flow (push)
pros: minimal waste, fast implementation, low cost, quick problems resolution
cons: uneven workload, requires full availability and high level of engagement
when to use: for one collocated team work that is dedicated to one project

Kanban (pull)
pros: dynamic adaptation to load; synchronization of different teams and disconnected processes
cons: low predictability for completion; buffers hide waste
when to use: disconnected or involved in the multiple projects teams; activities that need people with limited availability

Heijunka (level)
pros: good predictability, ability to plan, balanced use of people: avoid overburden and uneven workload
cons: non-adaptive, inefficient for tasks with unpredictable effort (a lot in traditional software development)
when to use: activities that are standardized, highly predictable or have to be scheduled

You cannot build reliable and optimal flow from the scratch based on a theory only. The best process for your projects will emerge as result of evolution, problem solving and eliminating waste. This is a topic of the next post.

If some problem occurs in one-piece flow manufacturing then the whole production line stops. In this sense it is a very bad system of manufacturing. But when production stops everyone is forced to solve the problem immediately. So team members have to think, and through thinking team members grow and become better team members and people.

- Teruyuki Minoura

References:
The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker
Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit  by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck

Many people (including my mother-in-law) think that computers are becoming so smart that programmers will be no longer needed in the near future. Other people think that programmers are geniuses who constantly solve sophisticated math puzzles in front of their monitors. Even many programmers don’t have clear idea what they do.

In this post I want to provide some explanation to uninformed people what programmers really do:

Programmers are translators of human ideas into the language of computers.

They are a link between two worlds – human and computers. Do you think it is easy to maintain this link?

Human World Background

The problem with people is that they’re only human. -  Bill Watterson

Humans are product of biological evolution and have a unique and precious organ for producing ideas for programmers – the brain. The brain is a complex combination of neocortex (unique to humans) and older structures inherited from mammals and reptiles. Older brain structures are mostly responsible for reproduction (sex) and survival (finding food or escaping danger). Neocortex evolved to support these function better, however it started to cause strange side effects – consciousness, thinking and curiosity. Thanks to these effects humans invented civilization and thousands years later computers.

Somebody could believe that after thousands years of development humans should become completely dull, predictable and rational species, but it didn’t happen – their old brain structures, complex psychology and social behavior often make people irrational, unpredictable and deceiving. In addition, humans have poor memory, strong emotions and personal interests. However, programmers don’t have choice of working with more rational species and have to work with human beigns to translate their ideas into the language of computers.

Computer World Background

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest. – Isaac Asimov

A computer is the best invention of human civilization. It consist of CPU, motherboard, memory, hard drive, monitor and some other parts. Computers moved our civilization to the new level, filled our life with meaning and entertainment and compensated weaknesses of our brains. There are good chances that computers will become more intelligent than humans. (However, I am a bit concerned if computers need human programmers after it happens.)

Modern computers are completely logical, straightforward and obedient. It is pleasure to work with a computer if you know what it should do and how to instruct it. The only problem is that computers will do exactly what you tell them to do. Therefore, you should have very clear ideas and instructions for a computer to avoid feeling miserable when you see your boss or customer.

Translation Between Humans and Computers

There are three main challenges in translation:

1. Language ambiguity. Human language is vague, complex and ambiguous – for example: “This program doesn’t provide good user experience”. Culture, background and context affect communication and meaning. On the contrary, any computer language is exact, straightforward and context-free.
2. Levels of details. Humans communicate often in general terms without many details – for example: “I want this f* program work right”. It allows them to save time and energy, but cause two big problems – misinterpretation and possibility that important details are missing. And a computer requires all details – everything should be spelled out.
3. Thinking style. Humans often think in terms of needs, outcomes and solutions – for example, “This report should run in 2 seconds instead of 2 hours”. However, computers need algorithms – sequence of steps how to achieve desired outcomes.

In order to write good software, programmers have to overcome these challenges, understand humans and translate their ideas into the computer language.

Skills of a Super Programmer

As we can see a super programmer should have two distinct sets of skills to deal with both worlds.

Understand humans and create solutions:

1. Communication -ability to establish contact with humans, talk with them without alienating and even heroic attempts to share own opinion.
2. Meaning - extract useful information from conversations with humans, decode and make sense from it
3. Logic - clearing, removing ambiguity and controversy from human ideas for uncompromising reality of computers
4. Creativity - dig, twist and play with human ideas to create good solutions
5. Design - wrap programming ideas with human friendly interfaces and convenient interactions
6. Big Picture – know how solutions fit into world of users, business and Universe to make your program useful.

Tell computers what to do and build solutions:

1. Logic (again) – organize programmer’s thoughts into cohesive software ideas and instructions for computers
2. Technology - uncovering and understanding the black box of technology (black box for 99% of population)
3. Programming Languages – learn the beautiful, logical and unambiguous languages for feeding computers with programmer’s ideas
4. Algorithms - master the most effective ways how a computer can accomplish a task
5. Modeling  - create abstractions and models for grasping and manipulating ideas in software code
6. Practices (as Refactoring, Unit Testing, Continuous Integration) – recurrent activities to keep system solid, healthy and possible to change

There is a big difference between a human-oriented and hardcore object / system – oriented programmer.
A programmer who is specialized to work with computers only is a half of the good programmer. Great solutions require skills for computers and human worlds.  Connect both worlds and become a super good programmer!

People are amazing, surprising and interesting. They change reality with power of thought and make things happen. What is most exciting – all people are completely different in their attitudes and behavior. But this comes with price – it is difficult to understand people and even more difficult to find the best way to deal with them.
Many people, who see programmers as extensions of their computer systems, will be surprised to discover that programmers are amazing individuals too. Programmers exhibit similar to other people behavior, they have different personalities and need individual approach.

I offer in this post a simple theory about Three Dimensions of a Software Programmer that could help to put relations with these individuals on some rational basis.

Axioms

There are two basic axioms in foundation of the theory

1. Constancy - some programmers consistently outperform others under same conditions.
2. Variability - performance of a programmer varies under different conditions.

Talents (constants)

Talents are recurring patterns of thoughts, feelings and behavior that can be productively applied. – First, Break All the Rules
Genes and upbringing form an adult human with specific talents and personality, strengths and weaknesses. These core individual characteristics of a programmer are difficult to change (except some limited success with consumption of large quantities of beer). Programmers are different – creative, thorough, funny, systematic, laid-back, curious, analytical, spontaneous and so on. Some people cannot be programmers at all.
Each unique programmer has a base performance level that is constant and almost impossible to change.

Three Dimensions (variables)

Now we can move to the part of equation that can be changed. Can we make programmers permanently performing above their base level? To answer this question lets review three variables of programmer’s performance.

X. Energy
measures amount of work and power of ideas that could change and improve reality.
Here I consider a specific kind of energy – creative positive energy that is directed to build better software and aligned with company and customers goals. Individual’s desire to act, create and achieve is the source of this energy. As we discussed above, part of this energy is based on character and predetermined. However, there is a big variable component of individual energy that is driven by motivation and environment.

Y. Discipline
measures ability to focus and follow necessary steps to achieve goals with good quality.
Accountability, self-organization and focus are core elements that keep individuals to perform on a high level. Personality matters here – some people will promise and forget immediately, give up experiencing first difficulties or become distracted by more interesting tasks. Some will fight until the end and go beyond limits to meet commitments, exceed expectations and bring excellent results. However, significant part of programmer’s discipline is variable and depends on context and expectations.

Z. Expertise
measures knowledge and experience in programming, technology and a customer domain.
Expertise includes know how to build software, make right decisions and implement good solutions with minimal troubles. There is no doubt that expertise is growing with time, but individual variations are big. Many people consider expertise as the only important characteristic of a programmer. I believe that it has much lower value without two other variables.

Programmer’s Archetypes

FfHII

How to Improve

A programmer can be 10 times more productive than other programmer and 10 times more productive than himself under different conditions. Therefore right people under right conditions could be 100 times more productive than others.

How can you influence programmer’s performance with these three dimensions? Hopefully, you found right people with right talents. It is a waste of time to change personality and push in direction where talent is absent. However, it is possible to amplify natural strengths and create conditions for super productivity.

Energy
goal: make people empowered, motivated, interested and satisfied; engage them to perform above their base level of energy

job design

• interesting work – brings inspiration and motivation
• control – over own work and decisions – pushes people forward
• self-organization – opportunities to find own ways that bring best results
• creative tension – goals on the edge of capabilities to focus energy and open new energy sources
• defined outcomes – clear direction that reduces anxiety and doubt and increases productivity

psychology

• flow – put mind in a state of energized focus, full involvement, and success
• positive experience – good emotions and healthy team relations; comfortable and trusted environment
• personal interests – decision making considers and takes care of individual interests
• right incentives – compensation, rewards, recognition are the great source of energy and motivation

environment

• space for mistakes – tolerance and open ways to fix mistakes make people think about moving forward instead of covering assess
• productive environment – where people think about work instead of nuisances
• fit – between personal and company goals, culture and views – amplify people desire to work
• reasonable pressure – normal workload, minimal stress, time slack to avoid energy drains

Discipline
goal: make people focused, responsible and aligned; make them performing in the right way

support system

• established process – align actions with goals and support their execution (Agile is the best way to go)
• transparency – reasons for decisions should be clear, problems should surface quickly
• pull system (kanban) – signaling system to trigger action based on actual needs
• control mechanisms, check and balances, audit, risk management (e.g. iterations)

zone of responsibility

• clear areas of responsibility – what is included and what is not
• balance of responsibility and authority – adequate authority to accomplish goals; restrictions to avoid damage
• rules of engagements – when, where, and how force (bold actions) shall be used
• match confidence with responsibilities – an individual is prepared and ready for the new responsibilities

standards

• safety regulations – mandatory rules for everyone
• professional standards – recommended parameters of work and products (security, performance, availability, etc.)
• best practices – spread approaches that work

Expertise
goal: make people knowledgeable, experienced and growing based on their talents

career

• right career path – built on persons strengths – enable growth in area of competence and natural strengths without switching into paths that don’t match talents (e.g. management). Avoid consequences of raising to the level of incompetence (Peter Principle).
• broadbanding – build levels of achievements and pay schemes that allow to achieve and earn more within the same profession
• match expertise and challenges- keep people always interested and challenged, avoid boring or over complicated tasks
• assist self-discovery – help search for the better career and role

perspective

• diversity in tasks and activities – accelerates growth and understanding
• big picture, direct communication with customer – informed people make more optimal decisions
• exposure to different subject areas – broader knowledge opens new possibilities and solutions outside the narrow specialization

learning and practice

• feedback loop – continuous evaluation and improvements based on feedback
• opportunities for learning – grow expertise beside direct work tasks
• sharing, coaching, communication – peer and experts access and support for growth

There is no standard way to increase performance of an individual programmer. Each individual is unique and requires personal approach. The theory of Three Dimensions of a Software Programmer suggests framework for these approaches.
It takes a huge effort to understand every programmer in your team individually and craft personalized approach, path and conditions. But it makes sense to do. People will be productive, engaged and happy. The company will grow and succeed.

What could be a better outcome in our civilized hard working world?

An expert have much better models of reality and methods to build them than an ordinary specialist. The expert, armed with these models, can quickly put pieces of a problem puzzle together, find explanations and solve the problem.

Models can be related to anything – software systems, business domain or your personal relationships.

Predictions and Solutions!

A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.

Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Any expert as good as he can effectively predict future outcomes and solve new unforeseen problems. Solutions and predictions are not coming out of blue. They stem from good understanding of reality in an expert’s head. Internal models of reality help to explain problems, find relations and play with future scenarios. These models establish the base for effective thinking and direct expert’s effort to solve problems. If you have poor models of reality, you will make bad decisions. Good models of reality allow reliable predictions and efficient solutions than vague guesses and ad-hoc spontaneous fixes.

Characteristics of a good model:

1. Explanation - provides understanding of elements, processes, events, root causes and effects
2. Testable predictions - a model that makes no predictions that can be observed is not a useful model.
3. Simple - you can remember and use a model without titanic effort
4. Frameworks - knowledge how to recognize common patterns and deal with range of similar problems. Frameworks allow to extend and apply existing models to new situations without building new models.

Brains – the main tool of an expert

I think, therefore I am – Rene Descartes

An expert’s brain carry and operates with models of reality. Unfortunately, our brains are not ideal for this task. Models they create are not identical to reality. Here is why.

limitations

• perception - our senses deliver to brain partial and incomplete information
• memory - our brains can process and memorize only fraction of available information; and even more – we quickly forget this knowledge without practice
• imagination - brains automatically filling gaps for missing information, substitute with interpretation based on internal representation of the outside world

cognitive biases (bugs in brain software)

• anchoring or priming – previous irrelevant experiences prime your consequent thinking and decisions
• need for closure – we are uncomfortable with doubt and uncertainty; we have urge to resolve and find convenient explanations quickly without much thinking
• confirmation bias -  from all facts we unconsciously pick facts that confirm our beliefs and predispositions
• symbolic reduction – we are anxious to reduce complexity for better understanding and tend to form simplified generalizations ignoring complex details and relations.
• and many others

social behavior

• subconscious models and believes – our minds carry beliefs and views imposed by our parents, teachers and culture.  These subconscious models deeply influence our models of reality without much awareness.
• peer pressure, conformity – our minds are wired to conform and agree with other people making us blind for inconvenient facts, ready to follow crowd and accept conventional views without critical revision

Objective Reality

There are no facts, only interpretations.  – Friedrich Nietzsche

Even smartest brains will have challenges to understand reality.

We deal with complex situations:

• incomplete information – we rarely have access to full information and even if it is available we don’t have capacity to collect and absorb all of it
• perpetual changes – reality is very fluid and changes every second
• complex relations and behavior – complex systems are difficult to understand: causes and effects, correlations, feedback loops, influence of processes in external systems
• difficult to test – we often cannot afford large number of experiments, trials and errors to come up with right models and explanations

We deal with people who make our reality very complicated:

• unpredictable - people are difficult to predict, they are often irrational and inconsistent
• confusing - people cannot clearly explain their thinking and feelings or even don’t understand themselves
• deceiving - sometimes people have difficulty to tell truth or simply lie for own advantage

Building Models

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. -  F. Scott Fitzgerald

We understand reality different ways – learning, investigating problems, finding new solutions and practicing. For years we can concentrate on solving immediate problems and do our work without attempts to understand the big picture. Many good specialists have incomplete understanding and fragmented knowledge that still allow to perform well. But it is impossible to become an expert without deep understanding and conscious effort to build good models of reality.

For example, we can stumble for a long time with challenges and failures in building software without understanding its essence and forces. (By the way, search for this understanding is the reason for this blog existence).

Potentially everything what we do in life could help to build and improve our models of reality. We just need to consciously relate our experience and learning to our understanding of reality. And we can do it on the go without special preparation, when we actively engage our minds – working, talking, reading, practicing, traveling, thinking and even sleeping. Just focus on reality modeling.

The models of reality could be explicit (facts and theories) and implicit (intuition and tacit knowledge).

You can use several strategies to build models in your whole mind.
A. Analytical

• find what is most important, map and connect main elements, players and subsystems; learn relations; draw Mind Maps
• understand influence of context and main forces
• create stories, metaphors and patterns – make your models better suited for your brain
• repeat the process for the most important subsystems

B. Empirical

• find most pressing problems, contradictions or real life facts
• understand how do they fit into your models of reality
• it is great if they don’t fit – you have opportunity to improve your models

C. Synthesis – reconcile your models with existing knowledge and leading models

• find what are dominating models, views and believes; what other experts think
• critically analyze this information and theories behind
• find the best opposing theories and try to combine them to form better model

D. Scientific method – use it for practical evaluation of models and confirmation of your theories.

• build hypothesis about reality and outcomes of your actions
• test it in practice
• learn from results and adjust your models

E. People interests and agenda – people are often most surprising and unpredictable element of reality. Your models will be much closer to reality if you understand motives, interests and agenda of involved people.
F. Change perspective – switch different perspectives to enrich models – economic, emotional, social, physical, etc. Try to view from opposite viewpoints and set of principles. Imagine yourself as user of your system, investor of your company, manager, any animal, computer part, etc. (Try to get back without loosing your identity :))  Web developers have interesting concepts of Personas – imaginary users with distinct behavior on website that help to design a system for various cohesive sets of needs.
G. Lateral thinking

• random association – associate models with recent books, distant knowledge fields, your favorite characters
• provocative thinking – make unacceptable, funny, stupid ways to explain problems and shock your models
• ask “why?” – continue asking ‘why’ until your reach questions that nobody could answer on this Earth (or the only answer is 42).
• expand concepts borrowed from other sources to have wider horizon for ideas

In overall, you will switch between two grand strategies – Evolution (discover reality and adopt to it) and Revolution (breakthrough and change reality). The choice depends on models maturity, certainty and your people capabilities.

Therefore

Few people have the imagination for reality.  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can be certain that reality in your head is different from objective reality, which is complex, changing and controversial. Effective experts don’t have choice and master reality by
1. Accepting own limitations in understanding of elusive reality
2. Building good models of reality applying different strategies
3. Using, testing and improving models in practice

Good models of reality will make your thinking, decisions and solutions much better. They will make you a master of reality instead of a victim of reality. Good luck with embracing reality!
References:
The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking , by Roger L. Martin
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware, by Andy Hunt