When the effective leader is finished with his work, the people say it happened naturally.

Lao Tse

The best thing about software is its flexibility: it can be programmed to do almost anything. The worst thing about software is also its flexibility: the “almost anything” characteristic has made it difficult to plan, monitor, and control software development.

Walker Royce, “Software Project Management”

Why is so much emphasis put on being able to repeat a process? I meet regularly with a group of quality managers; the emphasis of these meetings is usually on process. And normally on the process you use to manage the processes e.g. CMM, EFQM, ISO. I have tried on many occasions to point out that process is not quality. I have tried to explain that we don’t believe in certification for certification’s sake but that we are genuinely trying to improve the quality of the software we build. They smile at me and say, “But are your processes repeatable?” In actual fact they are but why is this the question that is always asked? Surely what matters is that the process is effective. What is the point of your process? What metrics do you use to measure the success of a process? How do you remove a faulty process? How do you improve a process? These are the things that interest me.

There is nothing that is a more certain sign of insanity than to do the same thing over and over and expect the results to be different.

Albert Einstein

Tony comments on boo hoo.

At the point of Boo’s collapse, we’d built BlackStar to a turnover of $1m per month, with a total operating spend (excluding marketing) of less than $2m in the two years we’d been trading. Our product development costs (i.e the website, and all our fulfilment and customer service systems etc) had been less than $200k, whereas Boo had spent $250k solely on the feasibility study for theirs!

This stuns me! When I think of all the things we could have implemented at BlackStar with $250k…

In business everyone knows that ‘creativity’ is a good idea and essential when information, technology and competence have all become commodities. While everyone pays lip-service to creativity, nothing much happens until there is a ‘nominated champion’ whose business it is to see that creativity becomes an active part of the corporate culture.

Edward de Bono, Simplicity

I have heard this said many times, especially about the giving of gifts. But does the thought really count more than the actual doing? Say I remember that it’s my mum’s birthday next week, I go out and buy her a random gift and give it to her on her birthday. Does this mean more than spending time trying to find out what she would really like and then going out of my way to get this? Certainly buying a present for my mum is better than doing nothing. But if she says, “It’s the thought that counts” is she really saying, “I don’t like the present but at least you remembered my birthday”?

Or what about that friend that you haven’t seen in a while and you think about visiting. For this to be of any benefit to you and your friend you need to arrange a time to see them and go do it. You need to make an effort.

Good ideas are like this. You can sit around all day dreaming, scheming and thinking up creative ideas. You can even put some token effort into making them happen. But thoughts by themselves are not enough – it’s the execution that matters. How many times have you said, “I thought of that years ago”?

I’ve always taken some comfort in the belief that the stronger an idea is, the harder it is to steal.

That’s because the best ideas, by definition, are so original and unique that they cannot survive without their creator. He or she is the only one who understands the concept fully, who can execute it up to its full potential, and who has a personal stake in keeping the concept going despite all the obstacles.

Mark H. McCormack, “Never Wrestle With A Pig“

Didn’t go to hear any talks this morning as I was too stressed about the talk I had to give before lunch time. Once this was over I felt much more relaxed and heard Paul Johnson speak on “Testing and Code Coverage”, a bunch of lightning talks, and Damian speaking on Perl 6.

We spent the evening at the Dicker Mann where I got to marvel at the madness that is Marc.

Went to hear Schwern talk on Advanced Testing. Schwern arrived at the conference with only minutes to spare and had to set his machine up whilst the audience watched. Taking the whole audience interaction thing to extreme he asked members of the audience to present him with problems they had faced when testing with Perl. Only a mad man would write Perl code samples at a conference full of pedantic Perl geeks!

He also got Marty and Greg to give short presentations on Mock::Apache and Mock::Object. Marty also spoke briefly on Test First Programming. The things Marty will do for an invite to the speaker’s dinner!