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We will talk about a new development technique called WDD or Worries Driven Development.
You might know another couple of *DD techniques: TDD and DDD but they are by far less powerful than WDD.
TDD or Test Driven Development has been invented by Ken Beck (@kentbeck). As Wikipedia states “is a software development process that relies on the repetition of a very short development cycle: first the developer writes an (initially failing) automated test case that defines a desired improvement or new function, then produces the minimum amount of code to pass that test and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards”.
DDD or Domain Drive Design is a little more recent, especially it’s hype, and as Wikipedia says “is an approach to develop software for complex needs by connecting the implementation to an evolving model.The premise of domain-driven design is the following: Placing the project’s primary focus on the core domain and domain logic; Basing complex designs on a model of the domain; Initiating a creative collaboration between technical and domain experts to iteratively refine a conceptual model that addresses particular domain problems.” In Italy Alberto Barndolini (@ziobrando) is really good at it!
WDD is more powerful because it works at a deeper level. It acts at the level of motivations. We tend to do what we do for one of two reasons: to seek pleasure or to avoid pain.
Now our culture tend to push us to the ‘avoid pain’ side so we tend to use it more often as a motivation to do what we do. So what’s more relieving than solving a problem to ‘avoid pain’?
That’s where WDD come from: we do what worries us. Or better we do, schedule, put in priority what can have consequences that can worry us.
So the algorithm is: if you don’t have it, create a problem, throw it in the future, communicate it so that everybody can be worried. Now you are ready to make a lot of overtime to solve it to ‘avoid pain’.
The secret? WDD is not that new: it is quite often used as a primary development paradigm in many offices of medium-big corporations. And it works …. maybe.
PierG
Courtesy of gluemoon, Some Rights Reserved
I remember when I did the keynote at XP2007 and someone told me: “amazing how fast you go in your company, I’m happy my users are not asking me to go that fast” I remember I said “they don’t ask because they don’t know you can go that fast“.
I always think of that moment when I see teams with slow process, full of unnecessary steps that are usually in place for at least 3 reasons:
- historical reasons (= no one knows why AND no one asks why they are doing that way)
- “because dept. XYZ/important person ABC once told us to do that way” (= no one knows why AND no one asks why they are doing that way)
- for the illusion of control
When this happens, I suggest people to try something that I’ve learnt during my hypnosis training: time is not absolute. Time is not absolute in the sense that even if it were absolute, we just perceive it (as we do with reality in general). As we perceive it, we transform it through our senses. And as we transform it, it happens time can go faster or slower depending on … us.
As an example when you are on the dentist’s chair time is soooooooo slow while when you are on holidays … it’s unfortunately too fast :).
Now what if we apply this concept to your company, team, business, task, process? Take your ‘lead time’: the time that is needed to go from the beginning to the end of the activity you want to speed up. Describe it putting everything inside: make a nice flowchart, Gantt chart, process map of what make you comfortable. Make it visual.
Now make the magic and say: what if I knew this stuff here can be done 10 times faster? Rule #1 stop saying “it is not possible” and start looking at all the components of your process as if you knew someone can go 10 times faster.
Our brain can be easily tricked: do you remember when your wife (or yourself) were pregnant? Do you remember how many pregnant girls you started noticing? Same stuff when you decide to buy a new car: it seems everyone in the world has that car all of a sudden.
This is called focus: your brain is so focused on this new important stuff that all of your energies go there and you start noticing stuff that you were not noticing before, your brain start automatically acting in a different way trying to satisfy your new needs.
Use the same trick here: convince yourself you can do it 10 times faster, 10xFaster:
What can you make differently?
Can you cut a step in your process?
Can you simplify?
Can you use different people with different skills to it more quickly?
Are different roles beneficial?
Does it help if you change the way in which people communicate?
Do you have to change software?
Are you really sure you have to do that extra manual step?
Don’t let the context (rules, politics, …) limit your new behavior: you can di it 10 time faster!
Do it. For 30′. In team. Deeply. And then leave … because you know, in the moment you start this process, your brain starts to be focused in that direction and this is the best tool I know to start changing.
PierG
hiding by Lance Neilson, on Flickr – Some Rights Reserved
Procrastination is evil .. almost always. When you think it’s probably the time in which procrastination is ok, double check: you are not that smart, you are probably cheating yourself 😉 (fear?)
And there is an area in which procrastination is even more evil: when you deal with people so procrastination and people management (can be your direct, your son, a friend …).
Procrastinate a negative feedback? You enforce a wrong behavior.
Procrastinate a positive feedback? You have chances that a good behavior is changed in search of a (potentially) bad one.
PierG
Courtesy of isafmedia, Some Rights Reserved
A child’s day from 9am to 3.30pm is like a 20-hour day for an adult. Children experience many new things every day and time passes slowly, but as people get older they have fewer new experiences and time is less stretched by information. So, you can “lengthen” your life by minimising routine and making sure your life is full of new active experiences – travel to new places, take on new interests, and spend more time living in the present
via The neurobiology and psychology that connect summer vacation with your morning run – Boing Boing.
Interesting link I’ve read following @abeggi (and his blog www.andreabeggi.net).
Where would you love to apply this ‘trick’ to your mind? Being back from vataions, I’d have applied it to my vacation 🙂 but as I’m getting old I think I should apply it to any pleasant moment of my life.
To tell the truth it seems a bit counterintuitive to me … isn’t when you are bored that time doesn’t pass at all? Any clu?
PierG
The title of this posts is probably meaningless to you (but if you know what it is, just let me know using the comments 🙂 ) but reminds me of a good time.
Yes sometimes good times come, not many usually, but they come.
I think our culture is too focused on learning through mistakes, looking at problems or failures. There is a lot of hype around the fail early paradigm. I’m not against it and I think we must start getting more from our success stories and moments.
So (1) celebrate! Yes Sir, when you do something good, you are successfully do celebrate. It’s not a sin. It’s good for our self, for our self estime, for our colleagues, for our family too. Smile. Be happy!
(2) learn. What went well? What can you do differently? But above all what was the key success factor of this success? Our brain stick to these emotions and you don’t need to be beaten to learn. Forget it. Learn from success!
(3) after a successfully project or task or … use this positive power, this power moment, to study something new. Maximize this learning moment studying something new: add a new arrow to your weapons.
PierG
Last week I had the chance to listen to a good training class on innovation.
The teacher talked a lot about his experience with several well known companies, talked about his best projects and then did his class.
Pretty interesting.
At the end I listened to a comment from someone in the audience:
‘wow, have you see how many good companies he worked for? And what a project! I’ve not understood very much of the lesson but he seems really good and he surely gave us a lot of good techniques’
What does this mean? That the content you are delivering is very importance but the credibility you have goes beyond the content. And it seems you can create credibility not only with facts but also through (hypothetical) third parties experiences. And if you have some content to deliver, it’s better you are credible if you want to be listened to. Especially if the content is good. And if the content is not good, you can try pushing more on the credibility, it might work anyway 😦
Our brain is so tricky sometimes …
PierG
Insulate yourself from anonymous angry people
That’s the first item in the list of reccomendation that I wrote in the Invent More post, quoting Seth Godin.
Talking with friends I understood that this list is not completely clear, so I’ll try to explain a little bit starting from: “Insulate yourself from anonymous angry people”.
We tend to act in a way to comply with what others expect from us. That’s natural and that’s why context is so important: to be in harmony with an existing context we modify our behaviour.
To be better, to be happier, we need to get in touch with, to by surrounded by people that can give us motivation, focus, energy or whatever ‘better’ or ‘happy’ means to you. And we need a context of people that are meaningful for us and our lives.
As who’s around us has an influence on our behavior, let’s start physically insulating ourselves from anonymous angry people!
PierG
We are strange animals: part for ‘nature’ part for culture we learn through an action-reaction mechanism.
It’s all about feedback, it’s all about consequences: we do something, something happens due to what we do (or don’t do), we see these consequences and decide what to do.
Do you want to mess up a team, or your son, or a person you have a relationship with? Start not giving feedback or better giving random one: the consequence are certain … #fail
PierG
p.s. Please note that sometimes not giving feedback deliberately is a feedback itself (remember: you cannot not communicate)
Interesting post on zen habits blog about the fact that discipline is overrated:
Every single specific action you can take to make yourself do something is motivation. Not discipline.
And that’s why discipline is a myth. It might sound good, but it’s not a useful concept. When it comes to taking specific actions to make yourself do something, the only things you can do are motivation. Not discipline. I’ve challenged people to come up with a discipline action that isn’t motivation for years now, and no one has done it.
Do you agree? What does motivate you when you need to change? What are your strategies for change?
PierG
Last Friday was the last day of kindergarten for my son: starting from September he will go to school.
When we arrived at the kindergarten he was surprisingly sad: he grabbed me, hugged me, he held me tight. After few seconds I said ‘Giammy it’s time to go for me’ … ‘I have to go’ … ‘I have to go to work now or I’ll be late’ … but no answer and no change in his behavior. For minutes he stayed hooked to my leg.
So I set down and said ‘ok, I will not leave until you are ready. Do YOU want to tell me when you are ready?’. He nodded.
After few seconds (much less than expected) he let me go and said ‘ok, you can go now’ and run to play with some friends.
The simple fact that I offered him the power to choose, moved him from his current status to a more ‘solution oriented’ frame. Can you imagine a situation in which you can use this strategy?
PierG
p.s. To tell the truth, I did all this stuff in an unconscious way: I realized it just after analyzing what had happened. Cool 🙂
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PierG (aka Piergiorgio Grossi) 