Archive for October, 2006

Posted on 12 October 2006 under General

This is a great passage from Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson:

“Your younger nerd takes offense quickly when someone near him begins to utter declarative sentences, because he reads into it an assertion that he, the nerd, does not already know the information being imparted. But your older nerd has more self-confidence, and besides, understands that frequently people need to think out loud. And highly advanced nerds will furthermore understand that uttering declarative sentences whose contents are already known to all present is part of the social process of making conversation and therefore should not be construed as aggression under any circumstances.”

I don’t think the above is always true but there are a good number of our fellow nerds for whom this is pretty accurate.

Posted on 3 October 2006 under Management

Over the past weeks I’ve been watching a team form. Its been a joyful experience. They’ve gone from being a set of individuals with no commitment to each other and very little trust to a true team that trusts each other’s expertise and motivations.

I think that a few things have helped this particular team form:

  1. The team members realising that while they worried about each other the project was getting late.
  2. The addition of a new team member who shook up the existing relationships enough to allow the team to re-form.
  3. The acknowledgement and recognition by the team that it was up to them and that they have the freedom to decide how they will do their work. Nobody else was going to do it for them.
  4. The injection of some agile management principles and ideas (courtesy of Crystal Clear).

The new team member is going on a long holiday in a couple of weeks. Hopefully, this won’t drop the team back into its old habits. I’ll keep you posted.

P.S. Perhaps someone should phone Steve Yegge and ask for his opinion on whether this is good agile or bad agile. I guess it must be bad agile since I don’t work at Google. ;)