Line in (old, probably out-of-date) lab exercises for BEA:
“Add a NetUI Image to the top of the Design Canvas by dragging a dropping from the Palette.”.

Ewwwww… if I find a dropping in the palette, I’m not dragging it anywhere.

[This entry was drafted in early January, at the beginning of the project for which we’ve now deployed Phase 1. Interesting to run across this now, as I’m wrestling with a similar problem of knowing when I know enough, now that I’m working on a prototype application using BEA’s portal product.]

My new project at work is a Microsoft .NET project, building an e-procurement system for one of our government agencies. Our schedule is very tight (see my Project wishlist that came out of dealing with the schedule) and the set of functionality to build is large. And the development team, including me, is very inexperienced in the technology – the team’s very senior, in terms of general development expertise, but has very little actual hands-on .NET experience.

Given a tight schedule and an inexperienced team, there’s a tendency to want to learn everything. Let’s see, we need in-depth knowledge of C#, of ASP.NET, of ADO.NET, of Win Forms, ………… What we don’t know can hurt us! And no senior developer wants to feel like they’ve just scratched the surface of a technology in which they’re required to develop a system. Where’s the balancing point, though? If we spend the time necessary to feel comfortable in .NET, we won’t get that time back in the development schedule. Sure, knowing more will let us develop faster and with fewer problems, but there’s definitely a problem of diminishing returns. Spending two weeks training won’t probably net me two weeks back in development time. [Follow-up note: nope, the training wasn’t worth it, given the time necessary for the class. But I at least have something to add to my resume. Most of the stuff we had to figure out on the project weren’t covered anywhere in the training.]

Seems there’s some fine line somewhere of just knowledgeable enough to do the task at hand, or, put another way, just barely above stupid. But there’s no Geiger counter of knowledge, or sniffing dog for stupidity. We, the very ones who don’t know enough, are required to figure out that inflection point of stupidity: that point where we’re just knowledgeable enough to make it over the hump to build something useful for the project at hand. Don’t go far enough in learning to hit the inflection point, and you’re not going to build anything useful. Go too far, and anything you build won’t be done in time. Gotta know when you’re doing stuff fast enough to figure out you’ve crested the hill, and then go full speed ahead doing, and put the brakes on the high-powered learning gear.

Key lesson learned for races – get directions TO the race, not just the race course map. Never made it to my race last night. Couldn’t find the dern thing. Found the Capitol dome and lots of neighborhoods that I didn’t want to be in, but no race. I need one of those GPS runners watches just to GET me to the race.

On the plus side, Jason and the girls had gotten my ice cream in which to drown my sorrows. And frozen orange juice to dip into, in case I was trying to avoid the calories of the ice cream. And then I ran this morning – 3 miles on the treadmill while I was trying to avoid the rain, and then 8 miles on the trail after I decided to avoid the boredom of the treadmill. All I can say is, Ken, I was actually glad the softball game got rained out. The idea of sprinting around the bases was none too appealing.

Running a race tomorrow. 8K, which my calculator tells me works out to 4.96 miles. Not the longest I’ve ever run, but definitely a challenging test for me. So, I was surprised to hear that a coworker is running this same race, and that she doesn’t consider herself a runner. This came about, as she explained, as a result of ‘beer muscle’. A group of her friends and she were talking about the race, and decided on a whim to do it. Heck, and there’s beer at the end of the race – what more could you want?

I actually hadn’t realized the beer at the end thing when I signed up. To me, it’s another notch towards the marathon distance. I’ll run it, aiming for 55 minutes or so, and then I’ll meet my sis for dessert. Gotta replace those calories I’ve burned somehow – might just melt away otherwise… 🙂 Whilst my friend is pouring down the brews, I’ll be sliding down some ice cream.

I’m desperately hoping I come in ahead of my coworker. I’ve been beaten by grannies, by folks pushing jogging strollers, by little kids… I don’t consider myself fast. But I’m working on the dedicated runner angle… ‘Twould suck skunked beer suds if I was beaten by someone running purely for the frosty mug at the end.

Martha Barletta’s interview with Tom Peters, discussing What do Women Want?:

Key insight: women want what men want, just more of it. Martha makes the point that research has shown that women are more detail-oriented than men. Details bother us or delight us. To give a concrete example lots of folks can identify with, who’s bothered first by the dirty dishes in the sink at your house, or the layer of dust on the shelves? Women make the details work, and that benefits everyone (men like houses that aren’t dusty too, right?)

So, women want the details right. That’s true for the products marketed to us, the services given us (I won’t work with a company that does a horrible job at service, no matter how good the product is), and our work environments. OK, but so what? The ‘so what’ is that we, directly or indirectly, control the vast majority of the money in our economy. We either directly make the decision, or offer the input to the decision, for most purchasing decisions. We make more than our husbands 30% of the time, and as much as our husbands 20-30% of the time. We control the checkbook 83% of the time. [Think of your own finances – most of the money goes out the door for the basic category items that never hit the big decision making processes that the guys have been typically attributed with.] We talk (you knew that, right?) and give references lots more than guys do. If you’re looking to sell to us or to someone we know, that reference can make or break you. If you’re looking to hire us, or someone we know, similarly, that reference can be the difference between an enthusiastic hire of a super-qualified person, or the continuation of a long and expensive hiring process.

So, listen to us when we offer opinions about the details. Actively solicit our advice, encourage us to offer it, rather than burying us in low-level areas. Seek to find and develop women into positions of influence – who better to lead your business than someone who’s wired to make the details better for both your women customers (note that whether or not you see them, their influence is mighty!) AND for your male customers.

Children are never static. Every day brings something new. In the past couple of days, Callie’s started standing up, and has sprouted a tooth. She’s also demonstrated that she understands the word ‘No’, though she quickly forgets what it was we said ‘No’ about. Each day when I come home from work, I get to figure out what it is that my kids have done and have learned that day. Cora usually tries to tell me something, and I then get to filter out what she’s actually done today, and what her brain’s churned over in the day to come up with a neat story for Mommy. Then the fun is to try to trace back the ideas she’s had to what might have sparked them – did she see something on TV? In a book? Did she and Daddy see something while they were out? Or is this something that’s percolating from a previous day or discussion? Tonight’s key phrase was ‘See you later, crocodile’. Obviously a cross between ‘See you later, alligator’ and ‘In a while, crocodile’ – phrases we often say to her as one or the other of us is headed out that she’s trying to appropriate herself. Really cute to see her trying it out. Then when I was putting Callie to bed, I got a big ol’ baby smooch, smack on my nose. She stretched her little body up and planted one on me, and then gave a big baby smile.

It’s this kind of stuff – the everyday excitements of what they’ve learned or done, the cute phrases, the smooches and hugs they plant on me, plus the bedtime snuggles, plus little heads peeking out the window to wave goodbye as I go to work, plus a hundred other things – that make me so darn glad to get to be their mom.

In my hunts for formats for lessons learned documents, I ran across the following conference listing on the Project Management Institute’s website:

Five Lessons Learned From the Memoirs of Wile E. Coyote, by Kelly R. Slone.

Looks like a looney kind of session, if you ask me… One I’d have happily attended.

(A little bit of follow-up search found an article of the same title, written by Kelly R. Slone, in the newsletter for the Western Michigan Chapter of the PMI.)

Most interesting quote so far in a book I picked up at JavaOne: “System Documentation is a Business Decision, Not a Technical One” – Agile Modeling, Scott Ambler. The gist of his statement is that writing (and then verifying and maintaining that documentation) takes time and resources that would otherwise be committed to other areas on a project. Documentation is one way of spending development resources, one which may help reduce certains kinds of project risks.

So, before you send me off to write another detailed design document or in-depth maintenance plan, think about what functionality you’re now willing to give up. In practice, what happens is that we squeeze the documentation in, churning out pages fit mostly as evidence that we’ve “done the documentation”, since payment milestones for contracts are often tied to delivery of those documents. But the net value to the customer for that document is negative, since the document doesn’t provide enough value within it to be worth the time reading it, much less the time writing and editing it.

Enjoying reading Mr. Ambler’s book (though he would have benefitted from a better editor). Enjoyed hearing him in person at JavaOne, as well. Always interesting to match a face to a name, and to hear what someone says when they’re a bit more unscripted than in a book. His Australian outback hat was a nice touch.