Not just the code.. recall Tufte's brilliant deconstruction

Post #112,569 by Ashton 8/3/03 6:33:36 PM Reply	Not just the code.. recall Tufte's brilliant deconstruction of the threat to merely clear thought! which Power Point represents across alas.. much more than stupid CIEIO meetings. The frequent assignment of \ufffd to seemingly random rankings of 'issues' - this tendency appears now to extend into areas very dangerous.. to life, and quite distant from the tawdry greed-refining of the bizness mentation. See his essay, The Cognitive Style of Power Point. (I received my copies of the PP screed and (Edward) [link\|http://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0000Rs&topic_id=1&topic=Ask%20E%2eT%2e\| Tufte's] observations of the misuse of NASA's prior data - that which led to the disregard of engineers' concerns, eliminating even a remote chance for heroic efforts to save the Shuttle crew. Beautifully printed, as always. Terse and sad.. to grok.) Is it too large a stretch -?- to lay at the feet of the Billy n'Bally Beast - perhaps the entire crashing of the workforce / the Economy now ongoing? (Not that they were clever enough to premeditate the viral effects of their shoddy thinking; just that there was never a single concern re what this crap might engender in the lazy mind - to which they pander exclusively. They OWN this market and the droids they have fattened up.) When we finally are able.. to ID and track the parallel reasons for the dissolution of all those comfortable sinecures, will we again Feel Good About Ourselves? Ashton
Post #112,571 by FuManChu 8/3/03 7:49:58 PM Reply	Formula is for babies. Not just the code.. recall Tufte's brilliant deconstruction of the threat to merely clear thought! which Power Point represents across alas.. much more than stupid CIEIO meetings. The frequent assignment of \ufffd to seemingly random rankings of 'issues' - this tendency appears now to extend into areas very dangerous.. to life, and quite distant from the tawdry greed-refining of the bizness mentation. See his essay, The Cognitive Style of Power Point. This is a symptom of a trend I have been noticing for some time: the desire to reduce acts of judgment to mere formula. For example, there was a recent thread on the BattleBots forum (over at Delphi), wherein most of the voices were arguing that the role of the judges should be streamlined. They should not judge the outcome of a robot fight based on Strategy, Aggression, or Teamwork, because those metrics are "subjective". Well, what the holy $%^&(* do they think the word "judge" means? We are rapidly approaching a culture which purposefully devalues judgment. I understand that they are following the almost religious fervor with which Americans work to remove bias from our judiciary system, our police force, our educators, our legislators. But bias is not the same thing as subjectivity. Remove bias, by all means; recuse the judge from his stock portfolio. But too many people then work to remove subjectivity, as if a policeman should only be allowed to arrest people whom they have not witnessed committing a crime. Part of that devaluation of judgment is IMO a natural (and irreversible) consequence of panculturated America--it is no longer sufficient to bring tough questions before wise counsel, since those tough questions are often culturally-bred and bound. Go ahead; ask Solomon to judge the actions of Microsoft: you'd find, I think, that he simply wouldn't have the enculturation to judge rightly. Because postmodern interaction is by definition cross-cultural interaction, in many cases informed subjectivity is found to be lacking. The role of judgment is being replaced by law and contract. Project management is no different. Managers crave the magic bullets which release them from the responsibility of judgment. They followed Six Sigma or read "Who Moved my Cheese?"--if there is internal strife, it's not their fault. They're just following the formula. The authors of Peopleware (Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister) have a great introductory book on Risk Management, called [link\|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0932633609\|Waltzing with Bears]. In that book, they begin by making the startling assumption that risk is a good thing! Well, of course it is--there is no innovation without it. Will a good ad campaign reverse this trend? I doubt it. Maturity is rarely transmitted by broadcast. Build trust with the decision-makers wherever you find them, and leverage that trust into education where possible. Is it too large a stretch -?- to lay at the feet of the Billy n'Bally Beast - perhaps the entire crashing of the workforce / the Economy now ongoing? Nah--I lay the blame firmly at the feet of ignorant management. And their parents. When we finally are able.. to ID and track the parallel reasons for the dissolution of all those comfortable sinecures, will we again Feel Good About Ourselves? Doubtful. We will complete that Grand Project just in time to kick off and watch our grandchildren forget we ever tried. I'm gonna go build my own theme park! With Blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the park!
Post #112,590 by Ashton 8/4/03 6:46:08 AM Reply	Thou sayest (only better) This is a symptom of a trend I have been noticing for some time: the desire to reduce acts of judgment to mere formula. Precisely: as in the computer-generated minimum-sentences for the Drug Warz - wherein a person with say, a month's supply of his fav escape-substance [instead of the statutory "week's" supply?] may receive 30, 40 years - much of it not reducible by any kind of behaviour. This further "Judge-obsolescence" was justified by such BS ideas as "Three Strikes": a slogan which began from an event near where I live - the kidnap and murder of Polly Klaas. Action. Media. Knee-jerk precipitate Reaction. (Everybody is against 'crime' - EZ political choice to go along with the mob.) I think you've nailed near the core - just another variant on non-responsibility via handy rote formula. I'd have to add-in of course, my fav: that language murder which characterizes all political yowling, and permeates much theological efforts as well. It's now spread quite far from that traditional venue. I certainly notice a great difference over 20, 10 years. Which brings us back to Billy obliquely, I think - the whole MicroSoft compound neologism thing (remember it started as Micro Soft). I don't know enough about the history of bizspeak to have noticed if the flood of meaningless TLAs followed M$ screwing with language - or if those were just shared contemporary trends. Somewhere amidst any identifiable causes of the langage-murder trend - there seems to be a connection too, between the "responsibility avoidance" and the intentional new language fuzziness all over. The CYA motive surely is also entwined with the plethora of lawyering which also chracterizes US decline: don't say 'it' very clearly and.. no one can require that you deliver 'it' either! (SCO-infected code, anyone?) Tufte at least got my attention (I've seen few PP 'presentations' live - though I have heard second-hand details, quite enough to grok the style). I can't extrapolate from his dissection, the magnitude of what this bad-thinking might have contributed to the general lying atmosphere of much business, except to realize too: the Enron-grade of deception is such pure criminality - it needs no fancy analysis. As to how many Murican Corps are near-to that level of corruption [?]. I think Confucious nailed it first and best though, and perhaps sufficiently.. concluding his small parable, ..thus if what is said is not meant, then what ought to be done remains undone. If that occurs then justice will go astray and the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence it matters above all else - that language be correct. And he wasn't even American. Ashton
Post #112,598 by drewk 8/4/03 10:05:32 AM Reply	Have you used MS Project? It suffers many of the same issues as PowerPoint, in that the tool dictates, or at least strongly encourages, the workflow rather than simply enabling it. We've just installed it here and I'm supposed to start using it. The documentaion walks you through "assigning resources," but it hides very well how to "schedule people". What I mean is that I can create a Gannt chart, but so far I can't figure out how to make the scheduled items show up on the user's schedule. I would describe myself as a fairly sophisticated power user. If I can't figure out how to use this supposed project management tool to actually interact with the people doing the work, I imagine there are lots of non-tehnical managers creating lots of pretty charts that have no connection with what the people they're supposedly managing actually do. From what I've seen so far, this tool doesn't support management: it supports bad management. Oh, and total agreement with another of your points: I understand that they are following the almost religious fervor with which Americans work to remove bias from our judiciary system, our police force, our educators, our legislators. But bias is not the same thing as subjectivity. Absolutely. It's like [link\|http://www.click10.com/news/2370015/detail.html\|this one], where a lawyer wants to throw out a verdict because "he said it was learned that a nurse on the jury panel was giving medical information to the panel." It is damn near law that your opinion doesn't count for anything if you are actually qualified to voice it. === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #112,600 by tuberculosis 8/4/03 10:34:58 AM 8/21/07 6:31:15 AM Reply	Yes and it is a joke First off - it assumes you can reasonably estimate the duration of the tasks you have to perform. Second it assumes you can even identify all of the tasks up front. This is all well and good for barn building. Not so hot for software development. In fact, its completely wrong. The cool thing about eXtreme Programming is you intuitively move forward in small steps and you generally get there with close to a minimal amount of wasted effort. The bummer is that you CANNOT predict with any accuracy the duration of the project overall. This drive M$ Project devotees absolutely batty. A recent employer moved a guy who couldn't code his way out of a paper bag to project "tracker" which somehow during a management coup became project "manager". We took to calling him 'clippy' because all he did was email us M$ Project files to fill in with tasks and durations - which he then collated and presented to upper mgt. Anytime I see "Wanted: Software Project Manager - Skills: MS Project" - I know its not someplace I want to work. Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations. --AndyBower Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 06:31:15 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #112,602 by drewk 8/4/03 10:48:40 AM Reply	I only want it for one thing I want to be able to track who's working on what, and what can't be started until something else is completed. No, I don't think the time estimates will make a damn bit of difference, but as long as I know that project B can't start until project A is finished I'll be happy. Oh, and when I assign somebody to a project I want it to appear on their schedule. SO two things I want it for. And give them a channel to provide feedback. Three, three things I want it for. Of course I could have gotten all the same things from [link\|http://www.tutos.com\|TUTOS], but that's a whole other argument. === Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
Post #112,679 by tuberculosis 8/4/03 4:16:47 PM 8/21/07 6:34:16 AM Reply	Link's broken Smalltalk is dangerous. It is a drug. My advice to you would be don't try it; it could ruin your life. Once you take the time to learn it (to REALLY learn it) you will see that there is nothing out there (yet) to touch it. Of course, like all drugs, how dangerous it is depends on your character. It may be that once you've got to this stage you'll find it difficult (if not impossible) to "go back" to other languages and, if you are forced to, you might become an embittered character constantly muttering ascerbic comments under your breath. Who knows, you may even have to quit the software industry altogether because nothing else lives up to your new expectations. --AndyBower Edited by tuberculosis Aug. 21, 2007, 06:34:16 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #112,713 by JimWeirich 8/4/03 7:41:34 PM Reply	The Planning Game I've used various different project tracking programs in the past and they were all poor at helping manage a project. Since I've started using XP techniques to do projects, I've found that the planning game coupled with good iteration planning works great. -- -- Jim Weirich jweirich@one.net [link\|http://onestepback.org\|http://onestepback.org] --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
Post #112,603 by deSitter 8/4/03 10:49:11 AM Reply	Excellent point -drl

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