DIY
I am a big fan of DIY whether it comes to software or buildings. The ability to learn by doing rather than the tedious environment of a lecture theater, or the dry text of a technical book; is something I deeply appreciate.
I have spent the past 15 months redecorating the flat, in the manner only I seem to manage which is somewhat overboard with big plans and big ideas and little appreciation for the time it takes. A trait I have spent several years reigning in.
Why try and muffle this part of me? It is certainly not by choice alone. Dreamers that do are what makes the world great, the people behind every invention, the activists, the progressive liberalists, the spread of atheism. People that will not and can not stay down, refusing to bow heads to religious dogma or bureaucratic unimaginative morons who run our daily lives.
However big ideas are time consuming, they by definition alone are poorly planned and difficult to implement. Agile had a solution, split down this big idea into smaller more manageable ones. The problem is the big idea gets lost in all the detail, the vision goes out the window and the idea is no longer fun for the idealist but fun for the bureaucratic.
Is there a real happy medium? probably not, the 2 sides of humanity will constantly pull and push at each other, even within ourselves, repressing and ridiculing every idea, yawning and rebelling against every decision.
The only antidote is confidence, however that comes with its own problems, bad decisions can lead to the implementation of bad ideas, and bad ideas are brought forward by bad decisions. This is the supposed reason for elections and not referendum, but that stems from the bad idea that people generally make bad decisions.
I have no solution just a dilemma put to the world.
March 16th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Counterpoints and sniffiness: the myth that genius is a solitary affair is quite a prevalent one. The ability to DIY is great, there’s also a lot to be said for standing on the shoulders of giants. Decomposing large tasks into small ones predates agile, or indeed software development, by millenia. If a big idea gets lost when you analyse it, then how is it ever big, or an idea? Execution counts as much as inspiration (which I think you acknowledge in your “dreamers that do” phrase): 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. It’s not either/or, and boxing up humanity into dreamers and bureaucracy is kinda cruel, no?
Confidence as the only antidote? What about group hugs, co-operation, and constructive debate?
And who’s the arbiter of good and bad ideas? Don’t current environmental problems show us that our definition of hindsight needs to be extended thousands of years into the future to be worthwhile?
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March 21st, 2008 at 5:41 am
Personally, I think the problems with BIG IDEAS tend often to be in their complexity. If your idea is so huge and ultimately complex that it requires an ISO process, documentation and legions of minions then count on lots of perspiration and a sheer brute force effort to see it through to reality.
However, if your big idea is based around simple, easy to understand principals that can easily be communicated, agreed upon and referenced quickly then I’d argue the work involved won’t nearly be as taxing on your available resources and may just even be a joy to deliver.
I think it comes down to being able to keep the entire problem and all of the guiding principals in your head at any given time so you’re most able to efficiently work through the project. If you constantly have to load/unload and evaluate (ie task switch) information then chances are you BIG IDEA is likely to grow in scope as you make new decisions on recent learnings – which of course are likely to have an impact on parts of the BIG IDEA that are currently ‘unloaded’.
Work is work – that 99% doesn’t go away, but I honestly believe that the old saying of work smarter, not harder is sound advice.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:07 am
Work smarter? Absolutely – I can’t imagine anyone proposing that we work stupider
But in any environment where you have competition, it’s not enough – you need to work smarter and harder (bearing in mind the impact of overfocusing on work over aspects of your life of course).
May 6th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I would say that you are mistaking single user development with multi user development. In a single user development environment the implementer must also have the vision. In a multi user development environment only one person is required to have a coherent high level vision. I would suggest that Agile development is multi user, given that the procedures in place are to implement high levels of communication between the different members.