Death to the Waterfall Method!
Reading The Agile Manifesto, I am struck by the similarity to Spiral Development principles that were espoused while I was working at the Electronic Systems Center. One of the biggest problems AFMC was facing was that the requirements for more and more complicated systems were being contracted out, with increasingly long schedules (thus increasingly large cost), and when the thing was dropped on the doorstep... it wasn't quite right.
Spiral development is an attempt to avoid the program management difficulties of the Waterfall Method of system delivery. Since most programs are an improvement on an older system, the first deliverable is usually one that is only slightly better than the old system, but it is specifically design to be modified towards an vastly improved end result. The next cycle of the development is to take the current state of the system, decide what enhancements can fit into the next spiral, taking time and cost into account, and them field the improved version in about a year, or an upgrade kit.
This is a program management technique, but it has a lot in common with the OODA loop. Everyone engages in OODA loop behavior. You can make a strong case that simple things like balance are highly optimized and subconscious OODA loops. In business and system development, it is a scheme for making decisions and implementing actions at a faster pace that a competitor can. Flexibility and agility are words that can be used to describe it.
Ultimately, if you can make good decisions and implement effective actions faster than an opponent (even if that opponent is your own status quo), you can "out-maneuver" him and establish a dominant position.
Remember that you must be able to take action as fast as your decision process. If the kinds of actions you can take don't produce results for 6 months, then 6 months is as soon as you can make the next effective decision. It does no good to change your mind at three months for such long-lead-time actions, because all you do is confound your accumulated results and restart the 6-month clock again.
Showing posts with label classwork. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classwork. Show all posts
04 November 2008
22 October 2008
Blog my thoughts...
"A beautiful company"... it's a nice idea.
If fact, it is probably a good way to maintain stability in a company so you can continue to make profits for shareholders. There's just one problem with that: the Board.
Unless the Board has the concept of "beautiful company" in mind, what they're going to see is a lot of fooferry being employed when standard top-down practices produce known results of profitability. Ignore the possibility that "known results" may not be as high as an established profitability under the beautiful company concept: How do you measure the beauty of a company? Anything you cannot measure is an opinion.
And an opinion shares much in common with a certain posterior orifice: everyone has one, and they all stink. You can't manage reliably to opinions.
So, in order to make the Beautiful Company concept palatable to those whose job it is to ensure stockholder value... we must create some workable metrics, and relate them to profitability. Anecdotally we find that beauty must have a relationship with profitability...
How do we measure that? What combination of objectively gathered numbers can be composited to indicate a presence of Beauty, and show a trend in the increase or decrease of Beauty?
If fact, it is probably a good way to maintain stability in a company so you can continue to make profits for shareholders. There's just one problem with that: the Board.
Unless the Board has the concept of "beautiful company" in mind, what they're going to see is a lot of fooferry being employed when standard top-down practices produce known results of profitability. Ignore the possibility that "known results" may not be as high as an established profitability under the beautiful company concept: How do you measure the beauty of a company? Anything you cannot measure is an opinion.
And an opinion shares much in common with a certain posterior orifice: everyone has one, and they all stink. You can't manage reliably to opinions.
So, in order to make the Beautiful Company concept palatable to those whose job it is to ensure stockholder value... we must create some workable metrics, and relate them to profitability. Anecdotally we find that beauty must have a relationship with profitability...
How do we measure that? What combination of objectively gathered numbers can be composited to indicate a presence of Beauty, and show a trend in the increase or decrease of Beauty?
14 October 2008
What is all this then?
How in the world did I end up with a blog?
By and large, most blogs I've seen are inhabited by people for whom the epitome of expression is "OMG WTF LOL@NEWBS!!1!!1!!one!!". They remind me of the guy that shared a computer with me in my Junior High computer class. He would giggle like a loon as he randomly dragged his fingers on the keyboard, thrilled that his actual fingers made actual letters appear on a screen.
Of the remainder that can string one word after another in some reasonable approximation of some written language, most are filled with people that can't reason their way out of a paper bag. I'd blame the public school system, but the worst offenders claim to have an Ivy League education.
Of that fraction, most don't have anything to talk about that interests me.
They say 90% of everything is crap. Due to the magic of the internet, I'd increase that by a power of three. (Update: 90% to the third power is 72.9%. Obviously, not what I am intending to convey. Instead, the inverse: 10% of everything is worth-while, and on the internet, that is to the third power, thus 0.1% is worthwhile, and the remaining 99.9% is crap.) So why would I want to dive into the compost pile that is the blogosphere, with the narcissists, idiots and [insert topic] geeks?
'Cuz I has to. Shucky-darn.
And since I have to, I suppose I'll set this up properly so I can get some use out of it. I have some ground rules for myself:
By and large, most blogs I've seen are inhabited by people for whom the epitome of expression is "OMG WTF LOL@NEWBS!!1!!1!!one!!". They remind me of the guy that shared a computer with me in my Junior High computer class. He would giggle like a loon as he randomly dragged his fingers on the keyboard, thrilled that his actual fingers made actual letters appear on a screen.
Of the remainder that can string one word after another in some reasonable approximation of some written language, most are filled with people that can't reason their way out of a paper bag. I'd blame the public school system, but the worst offenders claim to have an Ivy League education.
Of that fraction, most don't have anything to talk about that interests me.
They say 90% of everything is crap. Due to the magic of the internet, I'd increase that by a power of three. (Update: 90% to the third power is 72.9%. Obviously, not what I am intending to convey. Instead, the inverse: 10% of everything is worth-while, and on the internet, that is to the third power, thus 0.1% is worthwhile, and the remaining 99.9% is crap.) So why would I want to dive into the compost pile that is the blogosphere, with the narcissists, idiots and [insert topic] geeks?
'Cuz I has to. Shucky-darn.
And since I have to, I suppose I'll set this up properly so I can get some use out of it. I have some ground rules for myself:
- Outside of classwork requirements, I'm doing this for my own enjoyment. I owe nothing to anyone.
- This is my clubhouse. If, hypothetically, someone wanted to comment on one of my posts, I'll keep the post if it is on-topic and non-trollish, even if the poster disagrees with me with some facts and reasoning. I'll throw away the rest.
- My instructors and classmates will be able to identify me with this blog. Other than that, I'm keeping myself to myself. I don't see any value in attaching my name to the blog for self-aggrandizement purposes, and relative anonymity has its virtues.
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