Goodness on the Internets:
An Open Letter to Micromanagers by Scott Berkun.
“Owners of thoroughbreds never stop their horses during a race, every ten seconds, to remind the horse and jockey how to run, where the finish line is, or that it’d be a good idea to finish first. Why? It would slow them down. Only an idiot would do this…”
and so begins Scott’s letter to micromanagers everywhere. Complete with a link to anonymously send the letter to your favorite micromanager and signed, Hugs and Kisses, The People You are Micromanaging. I love this guy.
TDD Triage. Bob Martin addresses a number of questions around Test-Driven Development, hopefully dispelling some of the religious extremist views on the topic and showing where TDD works and where it doesn’t. These include:
- Is TDD a replacement for architecture? (Nope)
- Is TDD a replacement for design? (Not even)
- Should TDD be used for every line of code? (Usually, but... actually, no)
How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect. Alright, this is just awesome and reminiscent of Kathy Sierra's suggestions to insert a little randomness into what we do. A NY Times article explains the science behind why nonsense and randomness actually help us understand things better. And, with that advice, I'll end this here.
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5 comments:
<span style="">The portion of the New York Times article that talks about absurd stories and evaluating anomolies reminds me of an Abbot <span style="color: #800080;">post</span> back in September on <span style="color: #800080;">PowerPoint Karaoke </span>where people have to present a previously un-seen PowerPoint slideshow containing non-sensical slides. This is probably best descibed through <span style="color: #800080;">this YouTube video</span>. Funny stuff, and according to the New York Times article, intellect sharpening.</span>
Did you mean for the nonsense post to be a comment on the TDD post? (Actually, it is a good argument for breaking up 'the zone').
While I hate and always avoid being micro-managed, the analogy of the thoroughbred is a bit stretched. Im formula 1 racing, you have a team of engineers with u every "lap" of the way whispering sweet somethings in your ear, monitoring and adjusting parameters of the beast under your perceived sole control and planning things accordingly. You see, a horse race is a quick race compared to a formula 1 race. :-)
Edward de Bono formalised such ideas under the term lateral thinking, and came up with techniques for encouraging us to think laterally. So for example you might have a brainstorm session to solve a problem, and to make the most creative possibilities you encourage and and all thouhhts, no matter how whacky or apparently unrelated. By doing this you are encouraging people to think 'outside the box'.
At the end of the New York Times article, there was a correction posted on 12 November 2009 and it says that there were flaws in the studies cited in the article and that there was no statistical difference in performance of the Kafka-reading and non-reading groups when the studies were repeated.
It's sad how bad scientific reporting has gotten and it's also sad that people don't take sociology and psychology experiments with a grain of salt.
What do YOU think?