You talk he smells

I’ve been watching Sketches of Frank Gehry. If you’ve not heard of him, Gehry is an architect who creates really radical buildings such as the titanium covered Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao above. His creative process appears to start with sketches followed by models created in cardboard that get refined and refined until he is happy. It seems similar to creating 3d prototypes in software development as opposed to 2D specifications in documents. Interestingly Gehry is renowned for his projects coming in on budget. I wonder if this is because the reality of the design  and its problems are ironed out in the prototype rather than during the building’s construction.

When asked how Gehry works with his clients a client said “You talk he smells”. I like this as an idea for a way to gather requirements. Rather than ask the product owner directly what they want (when they really don’t know) its best to just talk and “sniff” out the requirements.

A Pattern Language

Scrum has its origins in Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development which has in turn has its origins in A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander. A Pattern Language is full of patterns about towns, buildings and construction. In the towns section one pattern really stands out to a Scrummaster and must surely have been an influence in Scrum.

“80 Self-Governing Workshops and Offices” states “A man enjoys his work when he understands the whole and when he is responsible for the quality of the whole. He can only understand the whole and be responsible for the whole when the work which happens in society, all of it, is undertaken by people small self-governing groups; groups small enough to give people understanding through face-to-face contact, and autonomous enough to let the workers themselves govern their own affairs” page 399.

Organizational Patterns

I wrote this in my notebook 3 weeks ago. I got home to find my wife about to go into labour. 12 hours later we had a baby girl hence I’ve been a bit busy!

I’m on my way home after some spur of the moment “There’s no bugs left lets go for a drink” drinks. Its been a good day with some great discussions. Creative juices are flowing. I’m reading Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development. Typically of pattern books its about naming and clarifying things you may have already experienced. So I’ve been pondering the organizational and design patterns that were at work in the office today.

Breaking dependencies opens doors – Our software is too closely coupled. Breaking the dependencies takes a lot of work which may not bring immediate benefits (See “coupling decreases latency”?) but combine with “CTO feeds direction” powerful business cases can be found for the necessary re-factoring.

CTO feeds direction – Whilst out sprints focus on satisfying our customer’s immediate needs, informal chats with the CTO give us insight into the needs we could be satisfying next. Ultimately our strategy is not decided by the customer but by management. Perhaps there is a related anti-pattern, “Management overrule customers”

Superstar clears muddy waters – Our new superstar developer sees through the mud we have been wading through. After working on the same products for many years we assume many things need to be the way they are . Our new superstar sees things in different ways. This opens up opportunities for dramatic improvements to our product.