What are the reasons for such a wide disparity in levels of accomplishment among individuals? Some of us achieve to an almost supernatural level, while others of us wallow in dysfunction. Most of us settle in to a comfortable mediocrity, content with limited imagination and experience. Some of us tolerate an uncomfortable mediocrity, feeling, knowing and wanting more, but unable to execute with enough consistency or purpose to rise above the banality of everyday life.
Certainly, raw Intelligence plays a significant role. That's not all, of course, as much has been written about the importance of Emotional Intelligence. A strong Will certainly helps drive us to success. Confidence also plays an important role. Without Imagination or Vision, nothing is possible. When we lack any of these qualities, the chance of outsize accomplishment and contribution is significantly diminished.
Success in this context does not necessarily refer to the financial variety, although that comes as a tangential byproduct much of the time. A successful life is one of fundamental joy. If joy is present internally, the external fruits display the result.
As discussed in the book, Outliers, mega-accomplishment also has much to do with fortunate circumstances or environment coupled with the opportunity to focus on a particular skillset for a significant length of time. 10,000 hours seems to be the magic number that roughly corresponds to about 10 years of doing something almost every day for several hours. Even assenting to the Outlier theory, I do not believe the outsize accomplishment is possible without most or all of the qualities mentioned above.
I believe accomplishment and contribution is Vision teamed with Intent lubricated with Confidence grounded by Intuition and powered by Intelligence. The more we have of these qualities and the more we strive to increase our levels of these qualities the more accomplishment, contribution and abundance we experience in our lives. The more we allow these qualities to wither, the less robust and engaging our lives will become.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Church Comparisons
Over the last year or so, off and on, I have been considering getting involved in a church again. I spent many years being more and less active in a Methodist church while my children were growing up. During that time my theological and philosophical beliefs and understanding underwent massive changes.
At the start of that period that began in my late twenties and ended in my late forties, I had not done much introspective or external research into what I actually believed. My beliefs were a muddled mix of what I had "learned" growing up in a rural Baptist church and other random secular tidbits of ideas from social science classes in college.
By the end of that time, I had read widely in areas that included philosophy, psychology, theology, science as well as pursued a couple of graduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy. I had also undergone 20+ years of life experience that included a first marriage, a long career in software development and raising two daughters. Given that, if my spiritual maturity and philosophical concepts had not changed, something would not have been working in my mind.
After settling into a comfortable agnosticism for many years, a couple of years ago I became newly interested in a spiritual conception based on metaphysics. This led me to the study and light participation in Religious Science. The catalyst for spending serious introspective time going down this path was the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber. Following this I became aware of Science of Mind magazine and began reading books about Religious Science, New Thought and the writing of Ernest Holmes.
While all this may be well and good, finding a church that supports this line of thought that also supports a non-corny church experience has been challenging. More on that in a minute.
Today I tried going back to a Methodist church because I missed some aspects of a more traditional church experience such as singing traditional hymns, a good choir etc. Unfortunately, after being separated from a traditional protestant church for a few years, the separatist and dualistic theology that is woven into the languaging is more off-putting than before. It will be almost impossible for me to return to a church that has deep traditional and historical roots, even though I do enjoy singing the traditional hymns and I found the people very nice as usual.
So, it should be easy to go back to one of the New Thought churches (or spiritual centers as some like to be called), right? The first problem is that the one I like the best, a Religious Science variant, is about 12 miles north of where I live. The music is great, the theology is rich and the sermons are good. The people are awesome as well and there are a plethora of classes and outreach programs in which to participate.
The other two are Unity churches, a somewhat minor variant from Religious Science, perhaps a bit more directly rooted in Christianity. One is a medium sized church where the music is good, sermons are thought provoking and also includes many classes and opportunities. Another is a very small church, very close to my home with more limited class offerings, but is a good place to be if I want to participate in helping to build the church.
The downside of the first is, again, location, probably 9 miles or so from where I live. The second is almost too friendly, where hugs seem to be the order of the day :(. Both suffer from a lack of tradition in that the songs sung by the congregation are very singy-songy and seem shallow compared to the depth of tradition hymns. At least they do not suffer from the dated theological language contained in some of the old hymns.
Decision will be forthcoming. I have eliminated Methodist or any other traditional Protestant church, so that is progress at least.
At the start of that period that began in my late twenties and ended in my late forties, I had not done much introspective or external research into what I actually believed. My beliefs were a muddled mix of what I had "learned" growing up in a rural Baptist church and other random secular tidbits of ideas from social science classes in college.
By the end of that time, I had read widely in areas that included philosophy, psychology, theology, science as well as pursued a couple of graduate degrees in Computer Science and Philosophy. I had also undergone 20+ years of life experience that included a first marriage, a long career in software development and raising two daughters. Given that, if my spiritual maturity and philosophical concepts had not changed, something would not have been working in my mind.
After settling into a comfortable agnosticism for many years, a couple of years ago I became newly interested in a spiritual conception based on metaphysics. This led me to the study and light participation in Religious Science. The catalyst for spending serious introspective time going down this path was the book, I and Thou, by Martin Buber. Following this I became aware of Science of Mind magazine and began reading books about Religious Science, New Thought and the writing of Ernest Holmes.
While all this may be well and good, finding a church that supports this line of thought that also supports a non-corny church experience has been challenging. More on that in a minute.
Today I tried going back to a Methodist church because I missed some aspects of a more traditional church experience such as singing traditional hymns, a good choir etc. Unfortunately, after being separated from a traditional protestant church for a few years, the separatist and dualistic theology that is woven into the languaging is more off-putting than before. It will be almost impossible for me to return to a church that has deep traditional and historical roots, even though I do enjoy singing the traditional hymns and I found the people very nice as usual.
So, it should be easy to go back to one of the New Thought churches (or spiritual centers as some like to be called), right? The first problem is that the one I like the best, a Religious Science variant, is about 12 miles north of where I live. The music is great, the theology is rich and the sermons are good. The people are awesome as well and there are a plethora of classes and outreach programs in which to participate.
The other two are Unity churches, a somewhat minor variant from Religious Science, perhaps a bit more directly rooted in Christianity. One is a medium sized church where the music is good, sermons are thought provoking and also includes many classes and opportunities. Another is a very small church, very close to my home with more limited class offerings, but is a good place to be if I want to participate in helping to build the church.
The downside of the first is, again, location, probably 9 miles or so from where I live. The second is almost too friendly, where hugs seem to be the order of the day :(. Both suffer from a lack of tradition in that the songs sung by the congregation are very singy-songy and seem shallow compared to the depth of tradition hymns. At least they do not suffer from the dated theological language contained in some of the old hymns.
Decision will be forthcoming. I have eliminated Methodist or any other traditional Protestant church, so that is progress at least.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Scaling Agile Out
Even though we are just starting to incorporate some Agile techniques into our team's approach to building great products, I am keenly interested in the notion of scaling out across the company. I believe that Agile thinking is a head-on approach to embracing change and a natural way of increasing discipline at a number of levels. However, it requires flexibility and customization to the specific company culture and environment. Starting at the conceptual level and following principle is more important than mechanical adherence to recommended practices.
That said, some things are not negotiable. Two principles that fall into this category are rhythm and planning. These two principles are directly related and influence each other. Rhythm levels include daily, weekly, iteration(sprint), release, roadmap(see dissenting opinion) and strategic vision. Planning categories should include the same time spans. What are we doing today, this week, this iteration, this release, this year and the next 3-5 years? What are the mechanisms we use to synchronize and retrospect for each temporal category? Without this rhythm sequence supported by planning that overlays the same time spans, progress can wander aimlessly or at least in a less than optimum undisciplined path.
My plan is to focus on the bottom-most level and move up on two different planes. The first plane is local to the team. Implementing practices that support these levels of awareness within the team, then inspecting, adapting and refining will allow me to build a platform of experience that can be fanned out across the organization. My goal is to move the organization away from reactionary fire-fighting as much as possible and encourage a further refinement of sync and plan that energizes and increases urgency.
The second plane of bottom to top movement is within the temporal domains listed above. We already use daily status reports to communicate what was accomplished yesterday, what we expect to accomplish today, and what obstacles or concerns may exist. We sync up at least once a week to roll up the daily communication into a weekly assessment of progress. With our first sprint, we are beginning to add the iteration level. Releases, roadmap and strategic levels are less well defined at this point. My plan is to move bottom-up, mastering the iteration (sprint) first, then attacking rhythm and predictability at the other higher levels.
So far, the iteration rhythm seems to be the following:
That said, some things are not negotiable. Two principles that fall into this category are rhythm and planning. These two principles are directly related and influence each other. Rhythm levels include daily, weekly, iteration(sprint), release, roadmap(see dissenting opinion) and strategic vision. Planning categories should include the same time spans. What are we doing today, this week, this iteration, this release, this year and the next 3-5 years? What are the mechanisms we use to synchronize and retrospect for each temporal category? Without this rhythm sequence supported by planning that overlays the same time spans, progress can wander aimlessly or at least in a less than optimum undisciplined path.
My plan is to focus on the bottom-most level and move up on two different planes. The first plane is local to the team. Implementing practices that support these levels of awareness within the team, then inspecting, adapting and refining will allow me to build a platform of experience that can be fanned out across the organization. My goal is to move the organization away from reactionary fire-fighting as much as possible and encourage a further refinement of sync and plan that energizes and increases urgency.
The second plane of bottom to top movement is within the temporal domains listed above. We already use daily status reports to communicate what was accomplished yesterday, what we expect to accomplish today, and what obstacles or concerns may exist. We sync up at least once a week to roll up the daily communication into a weekly assessment of progress. With our first sprint, we are beginning to add the iteration level. Releases, roadmap and strategic levels are less well defined at this point. My plan is to move bottom-up, mastering the iteration (sprint) first, then attacking rhythm and predictability at the other higher levels.
So far, the iteration rhythm seems to be the following:
- Team scoping and commitment the morning of the first day of the iteration
- Team scope adjustment the morning of the second day of the iteration
- Daily ongoing individual status reports (email)
- End of week checkpoint to gauge progress and concerns with iteration progress
- Middle of the second week checkpoint to gauge confidence level of iteration progress
- Morning of the last day of the iteration - 15 minute standup to sync on what must get done that day to meet the iteration commitments
- End of day demo of accepted features for the iteration and pushing of incomplete work into the following iteration
Most of the meetings listed here are 15-30 minutes. The team scoping and demo meeting are more in the range of 45 minutes to 2 hours depending on the content. An alteration of this schedule might be to move to more traditional daily 15 minute "scrums" that might replace one or more of the other short meetings.
If we can master this rhythm, something like this might be scalable across the organization. Most of the time the organization tends to move at a more lumbering rhythm. Much has been written about the benefits of scaling Agile across the entire organization. Pulling decisions and actions forward and executing on a specific number of small tasks that are framed within larger goals is the motivation for adopting Agile principles across a larger scope of functional groups within the company.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Raising the Urgency Level
I just started using Agile methods in my job of running a software development team. We started our first sprint (iteration) Monday. We are not "both feet in" and only a few days have elapsed, but I already see a difference in the team's sense of urgency and energy level. We are using Rally, an Agile project management tool, to help us run the project. Our first iteration size is 2 weeks. The team was already a reasonably high-productivity team since, in general, everyone on the team is committed to getting things done the right way. What was missing was a little more structure and focus.
We met Monday morning to agree on the list of Stories (collections of tasks) for the iteration and make general estimates of the size of each. By the end of the day most team members had broken down the stories into multiple tasks with concrete estimates in hours for each one. Rally rolls up all hours estimated in tasks into the Story level and provides various views including full iteration and team member allocation. We met the next morning to make any adjustments, agree that the amount of work to accomplish in the 2 weeks seems to fit and clarify any other concepts that were fuzzy.
The team is new to Agile thinking for the most part. As manager of the team I mostly cover the role of ScrumMaster (to use a Scrum term). Scrum is a specific methodology of Agile. When I say that we are not "all in" I mean that we do not do everything recommended in the Agile literature. For example, we use email for daily status instead of daily face-to-face standups. This was a practice already in place when I arrived on the scene late last year. It seems to work well, and we have tweaked it a bit and critiqued it recently to try to make it better.
I subscribe to the method of gradually going Agile. I believe that if you have a team that is already flexible and productive, moving to Agile is a natural evolution. Not being burdened with a heavy Waterfall culture is a real benefit. A small-company environment where there is already fundamental trust and a little bit of development anarchy is much more of a blank slate in which to imprint a particular process, and Agile methods are a natural step.
There is a lot of information that preaches that Agile will fail unless undertaken under the watchful care of expert consultants and training programs. A lot of this information is produced by companies who make their living creating Agile development tools. I am not heeding that advice, and instead trusting that I know what I am doing from reading and leveraging over 25 years of experience developing and managing software teams in a variety of business circumstances and processes.
I may continue to post as the experience unfolds to record the pros, cons and results of this experiment.
We met Monday morning to agree on the list of Stories (collections of tasks) for the iteration and make general estimates of the size of each. By the end of the day most team members had broken down the stories into multiple tasks with concrete estimates in hours for each one. Rally rolls up all hours estimated in tasks into the Story level and provides various views including full iteration and team member allocation. We met the next morning to make any adjustments, agree that the amount of work to accomplish in the 2 weeks seems to fit and clarify any other concepts that were fuzzy.
The team is new to Agile thinking for the most part. As manager of the team I mostly cover the role of ScrumMaster (to use a Scrum term). Scrum is a specific methodology of Agile. When I say that we are not "all in" I mean that we do not do everything recommended in the Agile literature. For example, we use email for daily status instead of daily face-to-face standups. This was a practice already in place when I arrived on the scene late last year. It seems to work well, and we have tweaked it a bit and critiqued it recently to try to make it better.
I subscribe to the method of gradually going Agile. I believe that if you have a team that is already flexible and productive, moving to Agile is a natural evolution. Not being burdened with a heavy Waterfall culture is a real benefit. A small-company environment where there is already fundamental trust and a little bit of development anarchy is much more of a blank slate in which to imprint a particular process, and Agile methods are a natural step.
There is a lot of information that preaches that Agile will fail unless undertaken under the watchful care of expert consultants and training programs. A lot of this information is produced by companies who make their living creating Agile development tools. I am not heeding that advice, and instead trusting that I know what I am doing from reading and leveraging over 25 years of experience developing and managing software teams in a variety of business circumstances and processes.
I may continue to post as the experience unfolds to record the pros, cons and results of this experiment.
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