Teams

I'm having more eureka moments reading Jeff Atwood's Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code, than my average trip to the dunny.

This last one got me though, man.  I feel like a dumb-ass.

Work's been difficult the last few years, I've been uber inspired for the company to do great things but every time I suggest something I get excuses - or agreement but nothing comes of it.  So begrudgingly, in a very "I told you so" manner, I started to do the hard yards myself (which has been really cool actually, it's lead to some interesting stuff), but ultimately I'm the little red hen when it comes to getting any help.

Then Jeff came into my life, albeit in the form of a $2 blog to book (best damn money I've ever spent).  The gold nugget I found was that my approach sucked.  I was turning my frustration against the team which I realised wasn't working but didn't see a way through.  The trick, apparently, is to care about the people I work with and want to help them.

I do, for true, but I lost my way.

So yeah, this rings true for me.  And it's something I don't need to fake.

Whether this gets the team pulling together or not's the next question, but first thing's first: sort myself out first before trying to sort out others.

Boyd's Law of Iteration

I'm reading Jeff Atwood's Blog to Book, Effective Programming: More Than Writing Code and really enjoying it.  Straight away it's informative and inspiring.

I'd like to comment Boyd's Law of Iteration though, as it struck me as not quite right.

Jeff states Boyd's Law of Iteration as "the speed of iteration beats quality of iteration" but I think the mechanism is more evolutionary than that - it's to make trial and error as fast and inexpensive as possible.  I don't think quality has much to do with it.

Trial and error is a groping search, so it's relevant when the environment is dynamic or when the next move is unknown.  This is life.  As soon as we think we've arrived at our destination or solved all our problems, we'll stop moving and sink into the shifting sands.

In fact, I often hear the guiding question, “what problem are we trying to solve?” but I think this is not necessarily a good starting point.  Apple aren’t solving any problems, they’re showing us goods and services we didn't know we wanted.

Let’s not be lead by market fit, let’s be misfits and lead the market.

PS3 Tribunal Order

You might have guessed I haven't been maintaining my blog. Thanks for all your comments, I'll try to keep on top of things from now.

Here's the order from the tribunal.

"Sony Computer Entertainment New Zealand Ltd and Electronics Boutique Australia Pty Ltd are jointly and severally liable to pay..."