Cogent Bloggers

Steve Hayes: Seven Norms of Highly Powerful Software Teams

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 10:31:00 -0000

I found this, a handwritten copy no less, while cleaning out a filing cabinet tonight. At the bottom I've written "Charlie Alfred, Education Services Manager, Object Design Inc, Object Magazine, May 1994". Apparently I've been carrying this around for almost 16 years. Since Google didn't find the article, I reproduce here for your pleasure (and so I can find it again myself).

Affinity for win/win

We strive to create an environment where the personal aspirations of each team member contribute to the goals of the team. We each are personally committed to achieving the goals of the team without sacrificing our lives outside work. We firmly believe that on the strongest teams the goals of the team agree with the goals of its members, rather than supersede them.

Common Mission

We share a common mission that is challenging, worthwhile, and clearly understood by all. This mission may be perceived by others as impossible or not worth the sacrifice. In this way, the mission helps us to identify our partners. Also, the more impossible the mission seems, the more we are forced to work together if we hope to succeed.

Quality

Quality is at the core of everything we do. If something is worth doing at all, it is worth doing right the first time.

Understanding Requirements

We strive to fully understand the requirements of the systems we plan to construct, including being acutely aware of how those requirements evolve over time. Furthermore, we actively validate our understanding of these requirements with the system's intended beneficiaries.

Interdependence

Individually, we each contribute strengths that counterbalance each other's weaknesses. Collectively we possess all of the skills, attitudes, and habits necessary for team success. Wherever an essential skill, attitude or habit is missing (or lacking), one or more of us makes it a priority to develop it, or we seek to add a new member who possesses it.

Receptivity

We are open to sources of new ideas and new ways of doing things, and use the norm to resolve conflict. We listen to each other's points of views, aware that our commitment to the same mission means that differences of opinion identify alternate paths to the same goal rather than competing paths to different goals. Also, we continually learn about and apply the latest paradigms, processes, and products in our technical, organisational and interpersonal activities.

Efficiency

Around here we work smarter, not necessarily harder. We sprint all out toward our goals when it is necessary to do so, but also know how to relax and rejuvenate. We make the 80/20 rule work for us. We take no shortcuts and cut no corners on the 20% of our tasks that produce 80% of our results. If any sacrifices must be made (in the interest of time), they always fall in the 80% of our activities that produce 20% of our results.

Thanks Charlie!

Steve Hayes: Netflix Culture

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 06:41:00 -0000

Many of you may have seen this already, but if you haven't I think it's an essential read. "Freedom and Responsibility Culture" describes how Netflix resolves the challenges involved in growing rapidly while maintaining a culture that supports rapid innovation and excellent execution. It's a good explanation of why they don't adopt the process-bound, complex-compensation approach that I see at many organisations. Some of what they do is consistent with what we do at Cogent, but some of it is radical even for me (for example, there is no vacation policy!). I wish I had read it earlier.

Steve Hayes: Cogent Departure, Part 2

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:09:00 -0000

In an earlier post I mentioned that I'd pass on more details of my Cogent departure as they became available. I'm at that point now, but before I can tell you that story, I have to tell you this story (a tribute to my 6y.o. son's Captain Underpants fandom, which is another story altogether).

Twenty years ago, come March, I moved to London. It was the height of Thatcherism, and shortly after I arrived I went to a matinee at the theatre. At the end of the performance someone came on stage to say there had been "a bit of bother" and we should avoid Trafalgar Square. As an ignorant new arrival I didn't know how to do that, so I ended up walking through the debris of the Trafalgar Square Riot. Welcome to London, Mr Hayes! London is an amazing place, with deep history and so many things to see, but the next year is tagged in my mind with impressions of tension and antagonism. I've visited since and found London to be far more pleasant than it was in 1990.

Ten years ago I was working at Goldman Sachs in New York. I was leading one of the best development teams I have ever had and we were implementing XP on a full project - a first for me and a first for Goldman. Early the next year I did something very un-Goldman - I resigned. I used my bonus to pay off my last debt (the mortgage on my house in Sydney), Amanda and I travelled around America (20,000 miles in just over 100 days), then we moved to Melbourne and did as little as we needed to to cover the rent. There were about 6 people in Thoughtworks Australia doing "agile", but they were working remotely on the Caterpillar project, and that was it. I spoke to as many groups as possible about XP, and things grew from there. Essentially this was the beginning of the path that lead to Cogent Consulting.

This year I'm going to complete some decade long cycles. The current plan is to return to both London and Goldman Sachs, as EMEA Controllers CTO (EMEA is "Europe, Middle East, Africa", but from a technology perspective that's Europe). Before anyone gets excited, there are lots of CTOs in Goldman Sachs - I think I'll be responsible for technical direction for about 0.5% of the banks IT staff, and I'll be in a matrix with many other architects. Regardless of scope, I think this is a great opportunity for me and will be a great experience for my family. We're tentatively scheduling a move in April, but plans are on hold pending the tabling of financial services legislation in London that may impact GS staffing. I still plan to finish up with Cogent at the end of March and to take some leave if there is time.

On the other hand, my infrequent blogging and twittering will probably become almost non-existent. GS holds things very close to its chest, now more than ever I expect, and is very careful that random technical comments don't get associated with the GS brand (for either better or worse). Since I'm an expert in random comments I'll need to watch my mouth fairly closely. :-)

If you're in London and you'd like to catch up later in the year please let me know - part of this opportunity is the chance to renew (and create) relationships in the northern hemisphere!

PS. Some people have read this and wondered why I would move to a job in management. At GS architects at all levels code 80% of the time, so if anything I'll be doing less management than I do at Cogent and in my current consulting roles. I suspect a lot of it will be up to me. I still expect to have plenty of opportunities to influence behaviour.

Marty Andrews: Cogent without Steve Hayes

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:16:00 -0000

In mid 2006, Steve Hayes and I were both working as independent consultants. I had known Steve since 2001, when the Melbourne XP Enthusiasts Group (MXPEG) had started up and we both became active members. When I became independent, he was kind enough to let me use the company name he had registered, Cogent Consulting, for invoicing. I paid him a nominal fee for processing my payroll.

Within six months, Steve and I decided to run some public training courses together to help market ourselves, and improve the Cogent brand for us both. Easy Access Training (EAT) was born. We ran a few reasonably successful public courses in early 2007.

The market at the time was quite buoyant, and pretty soon Steve and I both found ourselves turning away work because we were already engaged on projects. That triggered conversations between us about taking the opportunity to build Cogent as a business, and we decided to hire some staff and pay ourselves a salary rather than remaining effectively independent.

And so, on July 1 2007, Cogent Consulting was re-born as a structured business. Two and a half years later, we're a profitable consulting company with a dozen staff. Our values and policies are unlike any other local company that I know of, and we're proud of those unique attributes.

Sadly, Steve is now planning to leave the country soon, and therefore Cogent as well.

To say he'll be missed is an understatement. For me, Steve has been a friend, mentor and business partner for years. The shape of my career has undeniably been shaped by his influence, and the opportunity to help build a great company came with our partnership. For the rest of the staff at Cogent, Steve has been a thought leader and guiding influence.

I'm charged with being the steward of the company in Steve's absence. I'm quietly confident of my ability to do the job. Indeed, I've been sharing the role with Steve since the beginning, and we've got a good team around us to help. Cogent Consulting will continue on comfortably without Steve, which is perhaps one of his great achievements. It's culture will undeniably change though. Perhaps sometimes better, more often a little bit worse, but mostly just different. That difference is what I'll miss most of all.

Good luck Steve. I hope your new adventures are prosperous and enjoyable. With any luck, our paths will again cross someday sooner rather than later.

Steve Hayes: Why Post-Agilism isn't

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:25:00 -0000

I have a strong dislike for the term "post-agilism" and it will take somewhat more than 140 characters to explain why. Sorry twitter.

Post-agilism is a strawman argument. It postulates that agilism is zealous, doctrinaire and narrow-minded, and then posits that because of these deficiencies we need something that is "post-agilist". Implicit in this is that people who call themselves "agilists" have got it wrong.

This is simply another turn in a vicious circle. The "post-agilists" solution is a restatement of agile principles. Agile didn't start with hype, it didn't start with zealotry. On the contrary, Agile by declaration is adaptive and focussed on getting working software delivered. If you say you're doing agile but you don't believe in these principles then I'm sorry folks, you're just wrong. You probably weren't there at the beginning, and you've been misinformed, quite possibly by people who cherry-picked things out of context. We don't need another revolution, we need help with the swinging pendulum of the current phase.

So for the "post-agilists" out there - change your message. Say "wow, lots of people are doing agile wrong, we need to stop that, let's do agile right". Otherwise in 10 more years we'll have post-post-agilists decrying the shortcomings of how people have interpreted post-agilism (though more likely because of a lack of any structure than from too much).

Rupert Jones: Lighthouse

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:16:02 -0000

I purchased a build light for my team at work in November last year and have finally gotten around to putting it in place to monitor my CI server. I wrote a little framework called Lighthouse to manage when and how it turns on.

At about the same time I noticed that Simon Harris also purchased the same build light, but used a different CI server (servers?).

So, all this lead to Lighthouse supporting Hudson, Pulse and Team City.

On behalf of all decent developers everywhere; I'd like to take this opportunity to flip a giant bird at the developers of Team City.

Download Lighthouse.

Steve Hayes: Cogent Departure

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 06:26:00 -0000

With sadness and trepidation I need to tell everyone that I plan to leave Cogent Consulting. I appreciate that you're not supposed to leave your own company, but I've rarely let what you're "supposed" to do govern my career. My departure from Cogent will create a hole, but I'm perfectly comfortable that the hole will be quickly filled. Marty Andrews will take over my role as decision-maker-of-last-resort, and I expect that most people, both staff and customers, will notice little difference on how Cogent runs or the quality of the service that it provides.

The decision to leave Cogent isn't an easy one, but sometimes opportunities come up that you simply can't ignore. I'll leave out the details of this particular opportunity since it isn't finalised, but I believe it's in the "can't ignore" category. It's quite possible that it won't turn out as I hope and I'll be back, but I need to find that out for myself. As my lovely wife said, "If you'd never created Cogent, you would have regretted it for the rest of your life. If you don't try this, you'll regret it for the rest of your life." Or as she said to our son, "would you like to have a family adventure this year?".

I'm very proud of what Marty and I have accomplished to date. We're running a company using approaches we were told were unrealistic, that simply wouldn't work, and Cogent's existence is proof to me that they can work. All the books of the company are open to all the employees, we don't put people on gigs they wouldn't choose to do themselves, and we try to make as many decisions as we can as a group. We share our profits in a fairly egalitarian way, and we've done some product development. We don't do any of this perfectly, but our hearts are in the right place. I'm a little more balanced about the pros and cons of these approaches, a little less naive, but I suspect that Rupert would still call me a Trotskyite. I wish I'd started this ten years earlier.

In many senses, as an individual I'm not important to Cogent. It's the principles, values and quality of the staff that separate Cogent from other companies and help us deliver great solutions at great value-for-money. All of these things will survive my departure. Cogent has always been managed by a small group with contributions from throughout the company, and this will continue. The trepidation I mentioned earlier is for myself, rather than for Cogent.

I expect to finish up with Cogent at the end of March, and I'll pass on more details as they become available.

Nigel Thorne: accepts_nested_attributes_for and sti

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:10:00 -0000

I have a site that lets you create child entities on the create form for the aggregate root. Thanks to accepts_nested_attributes_for this isn't too hard.

accepts_nested_attributes_for :kids, :allow_destroy => true

The problem I hit was mixing this with single table inheritance. When the child node is for a derived class, it saves without the 'type' information being set.

It seems the accepts_nested_attributes only creates new instances of the generic base class entity, which then ignores the value passed to the 'type' field.

I ended up doing this work around to get it to replace #new on the base class with an implementation that returns the correctly typed derived instance when the hash passed includes a 'type' field.

Thanks to Coderrr for posting this work around.

Note: I've backed up the code to http://gist.github.com/273858

Steve Hayes: Waste that we watch for

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:33:00 -0000

Partially Done Work
Relearning
Hand-offs
Task Switching
Delays
Defects
Extra Features

Steve Hayes: Cogent Principles

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:32:00 -0000

Just in case you're interested :-)

Feedback over Technical Elegance
Reliability over Feedback
Relationships over Code
Learning over Producing