- Tech is dominated by “true believers” and those who tag along to make money.
- Politicians seem to be forever gullible to the promises of tech.
- Management loves promises of automation and profitable layoffs.
But it seems that the sentiment might be shifting, even among those predisposed to believe in “AI”, at least in part.
This extract from Baldur’s new book is particularly timely in light of the twipocalypse.
Time and again, organizations have sought to contain software’s most troublesome tendencies—its habit of sprawling beyond timelines and measurable goals—by introducing new management styles. And for a time, it looked as though companies had found in Agile the solution to keeping developers happily on task while also working at a feverish pace. Recently, though, some signs are emerging that Agile’s power may be fading. A new moment of reckoning is in the making, one that may end up knocking Agile off its perch.
I keep seeing Single-Page-Apps with huge JS files that only, in terms of concrete User Experience (UX) benefits, deliver client-side validation of forms plus analytics. Apps rarely leverage the potential of a Single-Page-App. It’s still just the same ‘click, wait for load’ navigation cycle. Same as the one you get with Multi-Page-Apps. Except buggier and with a much slower initial loading time.
When you look at performance, cross-platform and mobile support, reliability, and accessibility, nearly every Single-Page-App you can find in the wild is a failure on multiple fronts.
Replacing those with even a mediocre Multi-Page-App is generally going to be a substantial win. You usually see improvements on all of the issues mentioned above. You get the same general UX except with more reliable loading, history management, and loading features—provided by the browser.
Before you dismiss Baldur as a hater based on what I’ve just quoted, you should really read the whole article. The issue he points to is not with the technical architecture of single page apps, but with management.
Single-Page-Apps can be fantastic. Most teams will mess them up because most teams operate in dysfunctional organisations.
A lot of what he says really resonates with me. Over and over again I’ve seen projects where the technical decison around which monolithic client-side JavaScript framework to use has been made even before a problem has been defined.
Baldur’s conclusion chimes a lot with what I’ve been saying in conference talks this year: the biggest challenges facing the web are not technical in nature.
The biggest hindrance to the web’s progress isn’t non-expert developers, tooling, libraries, Single-Page-Apps, or Multi-Page-Apps.
It’s always humans.
Baldur Bjarnason writes an immense treatise on the current sad state of software, grounded in the historical perspective of the past sad state of software.
The right coding language, system architecture, or interface design will vary wildly from project to project. But there are characteristics particular to software that consistently cause traditional management practices to fail, while allowing small startups to succeed with a shoestring budget:
- Reusing good software is easy; it is what allows you to build good things quickly;
- Software is limited not by the amount of resources put into building it, but by how complex it can get before it breaks down; and
- The main value in software is not the code produced, but the knowledge accumulated by the people who produced it.
Understanding these characteristics may not guarantee good outcomes, but it does help clarify why so many projects produce bad outcomes. Furthermore, these lead to some core operating principles that can dramatically improve the chances of success:
- Start as simple as possible;
- Seek out problems and iterate; and
- Hire the best engineers you can.
Cassie’s enthusiasm for fun and interesting SVG animation shines through in her writing!
The use of React complicates front-end build. We have very talented front-end developers, however, they are not React experts - nor should they need to be. I believe front-end should be built as standards-compliant HTML/CSS with JavaScript used to enrich functionality where necessary and appropriate.
The story of Jack Garman and the 1202 alarm—as covered in episode two of the 13 Minutes To The Moon podcast.
Next time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself: how can this decision be made on the lowest level? Have you given your team the authority to decide? If you haven’t, why not? If they’re not able to make good decisions, you’ve missed an opportunity to be a leader. Empower, enable, and entrust them. Take it from NASA: the ability to delegate quickly and decisively was the key to landing men on the moon.
I got a preview copy of this book and, my oh my, it is superb!
If your job involves dealing with humans (or if it might involve dealing with humans in the future), you’ll definitely want to read this.
I really, really like the way that this straightforward accessibility guide is subdivided by discipline. As Maya wrote in the blog post announcing its launch:
Each person on a team, whether you’re a manager, designer, or developer, has a role to play. Your responsibilities are different depending on your role. So that’s how we structured the guide, with a separate section for each of five roles:
- Product management
- Content design
- UX design
- Visual design
- Front-end development
A really excellent piece from Derek on the history of community management online.
You have to decide what your platform is for and what it’s not for. And, yeah, that means deciding who it’s for and who it’s not for (hint: it’s not bots, nor nazis). That’s not a job you can outsource. The tech won’t do it for you. Not just because it’s your job, but because outsourcing it won’t work. It never does.
Some ideas on the best of use of time in sprint zero of an agile project.
- Understand your context
- Identify risks
- Understand the business process
- Get testing infrastructure
- Understand quality attributes
- Get to know the people
- Prepare an initial product backlog
- Build a walking skeleton/spike
- Build a learning backlog
Agile itself provides us with the ability and opportunity to correct course, it allows us to steer, but it does nothing as such to help us steer correctly.
This observation about (some) agile projects is worryingly familiar:
I was suddenly seized by a horrible thought: what if this new-found agility was used, not teleologically to approach the right outcome over the course of a project, but simply to enshrine the right of middle management to change their minds, to provide a methodological license for arbitrary management? At least under a Waterfall regime they had to apologise when they departed from the plan. With Agile they are allowed, in principle, to make as many changes of direction as they like. But what if Agile was used merely as a license to justify keeping the team in the office night after night in a never-ending saga of rapidly accumulating requirements and dizzying changes of direction? And what if the talk of developer ‘agility’ was just a way of softening up developers for a life of methodologically sanctioned pliability? In short, what if Agile turned out to be worse than Waterfall?
It’s day two of An Event Apart Seattle (Special Edition). Lara is here to tell us about Navigating Team Friction. These are my notes…
Lara started as a developer, and then moved into management. Now she consults with other organisations. So she’s worked with teams of all sizes, and her conclusion is that humans are amazing. She has seen teams bring a site down; she has seen teams ship amazing features; she has seen teams fall apart because they had to move desks. But it’s magical that people can come together and build something.
Bruce Tuckman carried out research into the theory of group dynamics. He published stages of group development. The four common stages are:
So if your team is storming (experiencing friction), that’s absolutely normal. It might be because of disagreement about processes. But you need to move past the friction. Team friction impacts your co-workers, company, and users.
An example. Two engineers passively-aggressively commenting each other’s code reviews; they feign surprise at the other’s technology choices; one rewrites the others code; one ships to production with code review; a senior team member or manager has to step in. But it costs a surprising amount of time and energy before a manager even notices to step in.
The Hulk gets angry. This is human. We transform into different versions of ourselves when we are overcome by our emotions.
Lara has learned a lot about management by reading about how our brains work. We have a rational part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex. It’s very different to our amygdala, a much more primal part of our brain. It categorises input into either threat or reward. If a threat is dangerous enough, the amygdala takes over. The pre-frontal cortex is too slow to handle dangerous situations. So when you have a Hulk moment, that was probably an amygdala hijack.
We have six core needs that are open to being threatened (leading to an amygdala hijacking):
Those core needs are B.I.C.E.P.S. Thinking back to your own Hulk moment, which of those needs was threatened?
We value those needs differently. Knowing your core needs is valuable.
Lara has seen the largest displays of human emotion during something as small as moving desks. When you’re asked to move your desk, your core need of “Belonging” may be threatened. Or it may be a surprise that disrupts the core need of “Improvement/Progress.” If a desk move is dictated to you, it feels like “Choice” is threatened. The move may feel like it favours some people over others, threatening “Equality/Fairness.” The “Predictability” core need may be threatened by an unexpected desk move. If the desk move feels like a demotion, your core need of “Significance” will be threatened.
We are not mind readers, so we can’t see when someone’s amygdala takes over. But we can look out for the signs. Forms of resistance can be interpreted as data. The most common responses when a threat is detected are:
All of these signals are data. Rather than getting frustrated with these behaviours, use them as valuable data. Try not to feel threatened yourself by any of these behaviours.
Open questions are powerful tool in your toolbox. Asked from a place of genuine honesty and curiosity, open questions help people feel less threatened. Closed questions are questions that can be answered with “yes” or “no”. When you spot resistance, get some one-on-one time and try to ask open questions:
- What do you think folks are liking or disliking about this so far?
- I wanted to get your take on X. What might go wrong? What do you think might be good about it?
- What feels most upsetting about this?
You can use open questions like these to map resistance to threatened core needs. Then you can address those core needs.
This is a good time to loop in your manager. It can be very helpful to bounce your data off someone else and get their help. De-escalating resistance is a team effort.
Listen with compassion, kindness, and awareness.
This tips are part of mindful communication. amy.tech has some great advice for mindful communication in code reviews.
Mindful communication won’t solve all your problems. There are times when you’ll have to give actionable feedback. The problem is that humans are bad at giving feedback, and we’re really bad at receiving feedback. We actively avoid feedback. Sometimes we try to give constructive feedback in a compliment sandwich—don’t do that.
We can get better at giving and receiving feedback.
Ever had someone say, “Hey, you’re doing a great job!” It feels good for a few minutes, but what we crave is feedback that addresses our core needs.
| General | Specific and Actionable | |
|---|---|---|
| Positive Feedback | ♥ | ♦ |
| Negative Feedback | ♣ | ♠ |
The feedback equation starts with an observation (“You’re emails are often short”)—it’s not how you feel about the behaviour. Next, describe the impact of the behaviour (“The terseness of your emails makes me confused”). Then pose a question or request (“Can you explain why you write your emails that way?”).
observation + impact + question/request
Ask people about their preferred feedback medium. Some people prefer to receive feedback right away. Others prefer to digest it. Ask people if it’s a good time to give them feedback. Pro tip: when you give feedback, ask people how they’d like to receive feedback in the future.
Prepare your brain to receive feedback. It takes six seconds for your amygdala to chill out. Take six seconds before responding. If you can’t de-escalate your amygdala, ask the person giving feedback to come back later.
Think about one piece of feedback you’ll ask for back at work. Write it down. When your back at work, ask about it.
You’ll start to notice when your amygdala or pre-frontal cortex is taking over.
Talking one-on-one is the best way to avoid team friction.
Retrospectives are a great way of normalising of talking about Hard Things and team friction.
It can be helpful to have a living document that states team processes and expectations (how code reviews are done; how much time is expected for mentoring). Having it written down makes it a North star you can reference.
Mapping out roles and responsibilities is helpful. There will be overlaps in that Venn diagram. The edges will be fuzzy.
What if you disagree with what management says? The absence of trust is at the centre of most friction.
| Disgree | Agree | |
|---|---|---|
| Commit | Mature and Transparent | Easiest |
| Don’t Commit | Acceptable but Tough | Bad Things |
Practice finding other ways to address B.I.C.E.P.S. You might not to be able to fix the problem directly—the desk move still has to happen.
But no matter how empathic or mindful you are, sometimes it will be necessary to bring in leadership or HR. Loop them in. Restate the observation + impact. State what’s been tried, and what you think could help now. Throughout this process, take care of yourself.
Remember, storming is natural. You are now well-equipped to weather that storm.
See also:
Wise words from Ethan on how to react when people create bespoke patterns instead of using something in an existing pattern library.
It’s easy for an organization to look at that one-off pattern as a problem of compliance, of not following the established rules. And in many cases, that might be true! But it’s also worth recognizing when a variation’s teaching you a lesson: namely, that your design system isn’t meeting the needs of the people who’re using it.
A great round-up of Leading Design—one of the best events I attended in 2017.
A series of posts on the decisions and trade-offs involved in being a tech lead:
I think good tech leads spend a lot of their time somewhere in between the two extremes, adjusting the balance as circumstances demand.
If you’re a project manager anywhere near Brighton, put this event in your calendar for the morning of May 30th.
Des is right, y’know.
Scope grows in minutes, not months. Look after the minutes, and the months take care of themselves.