Andy's Mind

Some folks started an inter-blog discussion about why enterprise software is mostly bloated crap. The theories put forward range from a meaningless observation that enterprise software “is not sexy“, through really funny stuff like George Ou lamenting that they are typically not done with “lightweight” languages like C++ but instead with “programming shortcuts like Java” to gloomy statements that it has to be that way since it’s enterprise software – so what else could we expect? Nicholas Carr posits that solution might be in doing enterprise software as web applications (exactly what we offer), which sets him apart from the others. But even that voice included some key elements are missing from the corporate IT experts prospective: who produces enterprise software – and how.

I think you can’t understand why enterprise software mostly sucks by not taking into account that it is the area where most projects are done with ineffective waterfall methods under heavy bureaucracy of traditional project management methods inside corporations. SAP implementation, for example, is mostly expensive consultants doing all kinds of paperwork and producing tons of specifications before any programmer does anything.

All that further amplifies the already bad effects of developers working in a corporate environment (like at SAP or Microsoft), usually not very dynamic, with limited upward mobility and very limited influence a single employee can have on a product. Adding long release times, extensive paperwork and removing any link between developers and clients has to kill any excitement and emotion developers have for their work. Without it what they produce must be crap.

Not that clients or producers of these overpriced beasts care. Clients got educated through their lifetime that enterprise software has to be hard to use, buggy and expensive. Producers are more than happy to earn huge profits from cheaply made products. Until the clients won’t start to ask for more not much will change here.

During the Agile Development Practices conference last week Mary Poppendieck announced that agile is now mainstream. Well, apparently it is not mainstream enough yet for the IT experts I mentioned above – or for the enterprise systems buyers. But I believe we’ll get there eventually.

It’s day three and the proper conference opened after two days of tutorials with a keynote by Mary Poppendieck. She officially recognized that agile has become mainstream now, referencing a book about how ideas cross a chasm separating them from mainstream. But instead of cheering and encouraging the audience to indulge in feeling good about it she warned us about possible ways in which we could fail with agile. What I did carry out from that speech was that we shouldn’t become too attached to “agile methodologies”. We shouldn’t follow what others are doing but rather constantly inspect what we do and adapt to our own circumstances. Mary’s keynote was full of references to books and cases showing the progress continues – some even see iterations as a transitional stage to a state of perpetual release, constant improvement.

Mary’s overall message was important to me. I represent a small team working from a little country at the outskirts of Europe – and hence I have a tendency to look up to those great organizations at the bleeding edge of the new. But we can be great too – and in fact, as I already observed, my team is well ahead of most of the people I spoke to during breaks. And that there are teams that are even better is great too – at least we know we have to keep on improving. Our clients can only benefit from that.

Afterwards I attended a session led by James Waletzky from Microsoft, which was… well, boring. He had this great idea of using two of his friends as actors playing a pair of developers – a waterfall-ish one and an agile one – talking about emerging vs. upfront design while he commented on it. It was maybe a nice idea, but the actors were not in sync with his presentation and what they discussed was so basic I got bored quickly. I didn’t want to disrupt others by leaving so I opened my laptop and responded to some e-mails thanks to Wi-fi reaching into that particular room.

Luckily, that was the only disappointment of the day. The afternoon sessions by Andy Hunt about the workings of the mind and improving how we learn and handle things in our heads were quite interesting. Some practices – like GTD or mind mapping or the left-brain vs. right-brain thinking – I was already familiar with. Others were new or I’ve just read about them but didn’t use them.

I always like to listen to people who have broad knowledge, research many things and can talk about them in an interesting way. I feel I have lots in common with such people, whom I call “searchers”. It is great that there are others who don’t just use the mind, but try to understand what it is and how it works.

During the break there was a small discussion and it turned out some insights I gained from my meditation practice were quite interesting for the others. I was surprised that Andy – being interested in the workings of the mind – started some kind of meditation practice only recently. We also exchanged some ideas – I’m now researching what EMDR is, Andy will – I’m sure – go through the website of the Global Conscience Project. As it is frequently the case – questions and discussions during breaks can be as valuable as the sessions themselves.

The day closed with another keynote, this time by Mike Cohn. His presentation – as usual powerfully delivered – concentrated on reservations and fears people have against switching to agile. Not much new material for me, but again, hearing it in an organized fashion was quite refreshing.

Tomorrow I’ll be leading an open space session on agile in outsourcing. I don’t count on many people being interested in such a discussion but I thought it’s worth a try especially as the subject is really underrepresented in the conference (and most of agile literature).

I’ve been assembling a piece of IKEA furniture again yesterday. It is not an accomplishment of any kind – it was a rather simple thing to do (any man who can’t assemble a piece of IKEA furniture based on the instructions provided by them must be either mentally retarded or blind). But it was always a rather rewarding experience, especially for me – mostly working on things virtual and intangible every day. It is quite refreshing to see something built with my hands make our home office more convenient.

I have to return to Amazon’s Kindle device for a moment today, because in my last post I didn’t cover some aspects of this device I find disturbing.

Not only it is totally proprietary and binds you to Amazon as the sole source of content – it also opens up a whole new set of possibilities for privacy invasion. First, Amazon knows about all the books you’ve read. And as the device is on-line all the time through a GSM network and knows who its owner is all kinds of things are possible: from gathering detailed statistics of what you read, when you read it, how fast you do it – and what notes you scribble – to tracking your whereabouts. Since the platform is totally closed there is no way whatsoever to verify what the device does and what it doesn’t.

But not only that – it would be also possible to retroactively alter publications. It could be seen as a good idea – manuals could be updated, errors could be corrected – but it can be also used to alter history, by for example removing mentions of someone or something from a newspaper days after it was “published”. This is purely Orwellian – the Ministry of Truth was doing exactly this.

Overall, I find this whole thing and the mindset behind it highly disturbing and dangerous. This can be best exposed by pushing this idea to its limit: let’s imagine it is immensely successful and everyone has one. Then everyone has only the books that come from Amazon, pays them for the right to read, there is no second-hand book market, no libraries too and Amazon knows who was reading what. All that is totally opposite to what a traditional book is – it is yours to keep, forever, no one knows what you read – you can walk into a bookstore and buy one totally anonymously – and you can lend it or give to anyone for free.

I think, in a nutshell, monetizing on everything and locking users into a proprietary platform on which they in fact don’t own anything, just pay for the right to read, is what I find most repulsive. Circulation of the written word has been limited until recently by the physical limitations of the books and newspapers. Now Internet removes those limitations – it should be an opportunity to make more available for free. There is something inherently wrong with the idea that you have to put a dime in for any page you read, any tune you listen to or any picture you see.