Part 5 Professional Practices - 5.1 The Silver Bullet

Part 5 Professional Practices

5.1 The Silver Bullet

70. On Alignment

Have you observed the way musicians align themselves – with their instruments as well as their fellow musicians, before every performance?  Musicians are aware that they need to be composed, they need to tune their instruments and they need to adjust and align with every other performer.  That is what alignment is all about in simple terms.

There is a Tanpura in my family.  It is an ancient Indian instrument. It is a string instrument. It it is not used to play songs. It serves the purpose of setting the pitch. It is played throughout in Indian classical concerts to provide the pitch. For that, it needs to be aligned or tuned. When it is aligned, it enables the singer and the entire team of performers stay on course. It helps them align. Every morning when I look at my Tanpura, a simple question comes to my mind. I ask myself, ‘Am I aligned to deliver what I am supposed to deliver today?’

Everyday millions of engineers swipe their identity cards to enter their workplace. You do that year after year and it becomes a second nature.  When it happens, sometimes, unconsciously of course, your hands pull your identity card whenever you approach a door. You are habituated!  Now the question is about alignment.  When and how do you align yourself to perform?  Minutes before swiping your card or hours after?  How can it make a difference to how you deliver what you deliver?

You need to align yourself. You need to align as a team. Besides, knowledge and skills, alignment is critical to deliver the best.

When you are aligned, you perform. You learn and improve. When everyone in your team is aligned to perform there is an air of mutual respect and trust.   There is perpetual feedback and learning – and it happens while you perform.  Begin by aligning yourself and align with your team.  That is fun!

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71. Knowledge Management

It isn’t enough if we know. It isn’t enough if we know what we know or what we need to know. It isn’t enough if we know our problems or needs. It isn’t enough if we know the solution alternatives. It isn’t enough if we compare and contrast alternatives, conduct feasibility study and choose the optimal one. It isn’t enough if we arrive at a decision to implement it. It isn’t enough if we keep talking about it, make a deck of slides and present it or create documents to illustrate what next.

It isn’t enough! It isn’t enough if we share knowledge!

Organizations all over the world organize annual strategic planning meetings. These are very important, confidential and company-personal events. These are the meetings attended by all senior leaders and think tanks. These knowledgeable senior leaders meet, discuss, raise questions, share knowledge, present, document and breakdown the tasks. 

In addition to this, every organization invests in knowledge management systems, learning sessions, workshops, certification programs, leadership interventions, and management development. Every year hundreds of books, thousands of articles are published in topic related to leadership, management, organizational effectiveness, personal effectiveness, and so on.   Billions of dollars are spent in corporate learning programs.

In spite of all these, those who do not go beyond the limit of what is necessary, become followers and struggle year on year - they struggle to differentiate, deliver and lead the pack.

This is because knowing is necessary but not sufficient. Converting knowledge into action is what smart companies do. This is what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I.Sutton convey along with numerous examples and success stories in their book 'The Knowing-Doing Gap'.

In general, we want to learn “how” in terms of language syntax, patterns, detailed practices and behaviors and techniques, rather than “why” in terms of philosophy and general guidance for action.  

Why? Shouldn’t we start understanding the vision and philosophy first?

Knowing comes from doing and teaching others. Remember. Doing and teaching!  

Learning from failure is a part of our life. There is no doing without mistakes. Courage counts. Fear increase knowing-doing gap. Drive out fear!

In addition to making strategic decisions, it is important to transform knowledge into action.

How can you transform knowledge into action?

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72. The Most Important Thing

‘You have been the captain of many teams.  You may have so many things happening in your mind. Your family must be missing you when you travel around the world. There is always a constant pressure from your fans and the sponsors. What goes on in your mind? What is the most important thing to you when you are standing in the pitch among tens of thousands of your fans? What is the most important thing to you when you are batting?’

Adam Gilchrist did not expect this question from our program anchor that day. I was sitting about 20 feet away from him with a room full of audience.  Once the question was put forward, there was total silence. I could observe the expression on his face. He took few seconds to think. Those two seconds appeared to us like a big pause.

He said, “Great question. No one has asked me this before. Let me think. Yes. There are so many important things at any point of time in our lives. When I am in the pitch, I think the most important thing to me is the delivery that is going to happen next. I focus on the bowler, his pace, his action and the ball. Everything else is out of my mind! That includes my family! Coz, anyway, I cannot do much worrying about or thinking about so many things, which are not under my control at that moment. All those are important in my life. I admit.  But I can’t afford not to pay 100% focus on the delivery. That is the only thing I have 100% control on at that point in time. Without that focus you know what will happen!” And he smiled.

Wow! Everyone in the audience could not do anything but applaud for the next few seconds! 

What a great conversation on result-orientation! 

Here is my question.  How do we become result-oriented?  We need to be focused. Is there something else that we must consider?

‘Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen’, said Michael Jordan, the former NBA star. Teams or individuals who make it happen do not stop at learning, practicing, seeking mentors and gaining experience. They know that “Practice makes perfect” holds good and it keeps you there and does not give you results all the time - sometimes it may lead you to mediocrity!   They go beyond what others do – I mean, they go beyond the normal practice of practicing.

They do deliberate practice or deep practice. World’s top musicians, athletes, performance artists, and physicians put themselves through deliberate practice.   Yes - ‘Deliberate Practice’!   It is a structured activity with specific goals. It requires extra efforts. It can be done with your current knowledge and skills. It is done in an environment that can provide you immediate and regular feedback. It is about performing the same or similar activities or tasks repetitively.

Musicians, who do deliberate practice, spend hours together in practicing the same sequence or composition again and again. Sports persons play the same steps or shots for hours together with a goal in mind. They do it daily.

Can deliberate practice help us? One of my professional friends told me the other day that deliberate practice can help us in writing good quality code. It can help us write good test scripts for TDD. How else can it help us?  We do different things to accomplish our goals.

We want to motivate our teams. We want to become top-notch presenters in showcasing our capabilities. We want to become great communicators in succeeding with our distributed teams. We need the ability to ask profound questions to help or teams solve problems. We want to write winning proposals.  This is just a sample list of things. With all these, we want to impress our customers and prospects. We want to win big deals. We want to be result-oriented. Can deliberate practice help us here? Yes. It can.

Try deliberate practice!

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73. Seven Essentials

You got a hint of challenges faced by 21st century IT professionals in Chapter 1 of this book.  In order to face these challenges, 21st-century IT professionals will need to transform successful practices into habits so that these practices become second nature.

Here are seven habits that can empower IT professionals to prepare, act, collaborate, optimize, and influence effectively in their career. 

1. Learn and Share:   Learning is a lifelong process. When I began my career in 1988, I wrote programs using the C programming language. In 1991, I acquired skills in the UNIX operating system and Oracle RDBMS. The next cycle of technology change came sometime during 1996, with the release of Netscape Navigator, followed by several application servers. In 1998, I picked up skills in object-oriented programming and Web technologies. That helped me stay current in my profession. Later, I went through training programs on project management and general management. Of course, I am far from alone in this ongoing learning — it’s a way of life for all IT professionals.

Going forward, the consistent need to learn will continue in our industry. By the end of the 20th century, the skills required by IT professionals started becoming multidimensional. For IT professionals, learning is an imperative and so is sharing, because sharing expedites learning and makes the learning process more efficient. Never stop learning and sharing. Lifelong learning is the way to remain relevant in the industry.

What should you learn? It depends on your area of specialization or work demands. Also, it depends on where you want to be as you move forward in your career.

How should you learn? Peter Drucker, in his paper “Managing Oneself,”6 answers this question well. According to Drucker, self-knowledge enables you to understand your way of learning. Some of us are listeners and others are readers. Some of us learn by participating in discussions, while others learn by watching. Another important facet is speed of learning.  Highly motivated and self-reliant professionals learn to learn faster!  They learn to work with global teams.  They learn to unlearn.  They learn and acquire value skills. According to Peter Denning and Robert Dunham, value skill sets include coordination, customer relations, commitment management, team management, lifelong learning, and business and entrepreneurship.  And they learn to share.

The best way to learn is by sharing, by either teaching or participating in knowledge-sharing forums. Knowledge sharing is mutually beneficial to all participants and improves learning efficiency. In essence, active participation in communities of practice boosts the process of learning and sharing. This is because it creates an atmosphere of learning and sharing among like-minded professionals and serves as a cerebral platform for everyone, irrespective of organizational hierarchy.

2. Experiment and Explore:  Why? Our professional lives are not a predictable sequence of well-structured events and outcomes. We are quite often constrained to handle new situations with limited resources. In order to be prepared to manage such situations, thinking beyond the obvious is necessary to foresee risks and manage them proactively. Attention to detail and understanding systems at a high level are essential when you experiment and explore. Typical candidates for experimentation and exploration are areas related to our current work or project and emerging trends that we anticipate at our workplace. In our industry, there is no system that reveals itself completely with all details. There is no course that teaches all techniques entirely. Experimenting and exploring help us to better understand what we do. Experiment perpetually and explore relentlessly. Dare to enter untested waters. When we develop the habit of experimenting and exploring, we get an opportunity to validate — and sometimes refine — our understanding of how things work.

With the advent of cloud computing, the current generation of IT professionals has unlimited resources as well as challenges. Experimenting and exploring can be fun at times when we decide to collaborate with professionals across the globe. When we work with global teams, experimenting and exploring strengthen the team; team members experience “cross-fertilization,” as Hirotaka Takeuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka describe in their paper “The New New Product Development Game.” Written in 1986, the paper discusses concurrent engineering in the automobile industry and presents the roots of Scrum, which is one of the most popular agile methodologies in our industry.

3. Take the Initiative: We perceive initiatives as big projects seeded with great ideas aimed at making a technology breakthrough. In fact, this is a fallacy. One can undertake very small initiatives. Put together, the impact of such initiatives can be significant. What does “taking the initiative” mean? It means recognizing our responsibilities above and beyond the stated job and converting our ideas or thoughts into actions at the right time. It is all about taking the first right step. Asking precise questions and seeking answers is a very good example of taking the initiative. Also, the act of “self-inquiry” is an initiative by itself.  When you develop this habit, you understand the big picture in order to execute tasks on hand effectively.

IT professionals are often intrigued by questions such as:

·         How do I manage a difficult customer?

·         How do I transition from my current role into the next role?

·         How do I work with a team that works for another company overseas?

·         How do I safeguard the data of millions of users?

There are no books or training programs that provide comprehensive and foolproof answers to these questions. Those who have the habit of taking the initiative leverage the first two habits. They undertake initiatives to “learn to share” and “experiment and explore.” Eventually, they find answers to such questions and move forward. Sometimes, I have seen IT professionals misunderstand this habit in terms of being very aggressive or forceful.  This is not about being aggressive or forceful.  This is about becoming and being authentic and assertive.

4. Practice Reuse:  IT professionals of all categories from computer programmers to IT trainers can improve their efficiency and the quality of their work by applying reuse. Reuse is applicable to several things, such as components, document templates, processes, presentations, problem resolutions, test cases, and training modules. When we practice component reuse, we eliminate redundant work and hence avoid duplication of effort. This improves productivity. Also, component reuse leads to standardization and hence improves ease of maintenance. Using a well-tested component in several instances is the way to reduce the overhead involved in verification and to improve product quality.  Do you practice reuse?

Interestingly, the first three habits serve as a combined force and can help you leverage the benefits of this practice. First, you learn reuse and share the concepts with your teams. Second, you experiment and explore further to strengthen your confidence in reuse. Third, you identify areas where reuse can be applied and undertake initiatives. Fourth, you practice reuse. When you develop the habit of putting reuse into practice, there is no need to make it a part of the corporate IT strategy, as it has already become your habit! Also, when you become habituated to experimentation, exploration, and reuse, you find opportunities for innovation.

Professionals who practice reuse value time and manage their time effectively. They reuse their creations. Meanwhile, they are ethical and make sure that they do not violate copyrights. They exhibit an unhurried sense of time. What does this mean in the IT context? It means that professionals do not resort to quick-fix solutions because of speed-to-market constraints. They pay attention to details and value quality. They do not hesitate to learn from others or reuse the artifacts of their peers to deliver timely results.

5. Value Quality:  In the IT industry, the scope of quality extends beyond the most commonly known dimensions — namely, product quality and process quality. The Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship is a very good example of how industry leaders are propagating quality consciousness among professionals. In addition to product quality, the manifesto emphasizes business quality, professional quality, and engagement quality. Business quality is directly related to gradual value addition; professional quality is deep rooted in growing with fellow professionals through learning and sharing; and engagement quality is all about nurturing productive partnerships and ensuring customer satisfaction. During the 21st century and beyond, IT will not only be a dominant aspect of banking and e-commerce systems, but also an intertwined entity that impacts human lives from all angles. The need to value quality in IT has become highly significant for IT professionals, who are nothing less than the custodians or guardians of IT systems of all categories.

The effectiveness of this habit increases when IT professionals practice the first four. In the IT industry, the failure of many of the quality standards and models can be attributed to the lack of the first four habits among professionals who try to implement quality standards or models. I have come across software quality assurance (SQA) organizations in big companies that do not focus on learning and sharing, experimenting and exploring, taking the initiative, or practicing reuse, so they struggle to implement quality processes and typically achieve dismal results. SQA organizations do not consider demonstration of their subject matter expertise their top priority. Instead they keep pushing hard on quality processes and eventually fail to impress or assure practitioners.

Unless IT professionals value quality, it is very difficult to deliver quality products and services that are based on a sound strategy for long-term IT sustainability. IT professionals need to value quality in order to make IT sustainable beyond the 21st century. 

6. Synergize: The word “synergy” originates from the Greek verb synergos, which means working together. Synergy is the result of creative cooperation among professionals. But in the IT profession, synergy is more than just working together with other professionals — it involves tools and techniques as well. Interestingly, IT professionals who have the habit of synergizing with both their team members and tools become highly productive and successful.

Pair programming, is a very good example of synergizing. The concept of pair programming can be extended to pair debugging, in which a developer and a tester pair together while debugging. Also, it can be applied to production support and other such activities. By nature, people tend to synergize when the need arises. When we develop the habit of synergizing, we tend to elevate ourselves from working as individual contributors and start working together.

Why do IT professionals need to synergize with tools? Let me present three examples. First, working with distributed teams is one of the challenges in the IT industry. To work together with distributed teams, one must first start working together with local teams. The next step is to build synergy with the right set of tools and techniques that can help the IT professional connect with distributed teams. 

Second, the projects and tasks of 21st-century IT professionals involve multiple technologies, tools, and platforms. IT workers need to know the combination and configuration of tools and techniques that can provide optimal results in a given situation. This requires not only awareness, but also a flexible mindset to leverage the benefits of the right set of tools and platforms. Lateral thinking, systems thinking, and the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (aka TRIZ) are some of the techniques that help IT professionals adopt innovative approaches to solving IT problems.

The third example has to do with setting up product development and maintenance environments for effective product engineering. Development and maintenance teams that set up integrated development environments with tools for static analysis of source code, code reviews, source code control, build and deploy, and automated unit testing synergize the benefit of individual tools and hence deliver high-quality working code. Professionals who practice this habit realize that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

7. Radiate “Can-Do” Attitude: In the 21st century, many IT professionals come across situations that demand a high degree of exploration and timely action. In such situations, professionals with a can-do attitude become the winners. With the prediction that 70% of IT professionals will be involved in maintenance projects, coupled with rising staff attrition in IT projects, the IT profession is becoming a tall order. More than ever, IT professionals will need to take a can-do attitude wherever they go and to whatever project they work on.

Solution-focused action with conviction, courage, confidence, and passion is what radiates can-do attitude. This attitude is contagious. Young professionals get inspired by the can-do attitude of experienced professionals.

If you haven’t, it is not too late to master these seven habits and join the virtuous cycle!

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74. Daily Routine of Manoj

Manoj was born in a lower middle class family in 1980.  He grew up in a small village in Orissa and moved to Pune to start his work.   In spite of his upbringing in a rural atmosphere, he is no less than an urban adult in anyways.  He is competent. He is simple but smiling and cheerful always.  He is an avid biker.

His daily routine starts at five in the morning with a one-hour workout in a local gym, which is at a walking distance from his home.  He never misses going to gym other than a day or two in a year.  Morning workouts make him hale and healthy to take care of his ten or twelve hours of daily work.  He drives his motor bike to take care of his daily work. He leads a healthy life. He is positive and proud of his daily routine.  He values his customers’ time and money.  He provides the right solutions to customers.  He is ethical and known for his integrity. On the average his earnings per hour hovers around a thousand Indian Rupees (close to 16 US Dollars).

He is not a software engineer or a hi-tech professional. He runs his minor plumbing business with his brother. He keeps himself up-to-date on the tools, accessories and techniques required for his craft.  He is not on the payroll of anyone. He is on his own.  I meet him couple of times a week in my neighborhood.  Every time I see him, I must say, he radiates abundance of self-esteem and optimism.

He does not depend on advertisements in local newspapers and magazines. He believes in hard work and professionalism.  That is his brand.  His workmanship is what presents him to the market. His good work passes on from one household to another through word of mouth.  Every other person in my neighborhood knows his cell number. He responds to customers in a timely manner.   When there is an emergency, he delivers himself with in minutes – even if he is busy. 

Last summer, a water pipe cracked in my friend’s apartment, which is in the sixth floor of an eleven-storied apartment complex.  Water from the overhead tank gushed through the broken pipe in to my friend’s balcony and started entering the bedroom.  That was at 11 pm. My friend call me and in turn, I called Manoj.   Manoj appeared in front of us in ten minutes.  He applied a timely fix to stop the water.  He went home at half past twelve.   He returned the next day to recheck and collect his fee.

He had no development environment or staging environment. He had to do it live on the production environment. He was fearless. He did it right and he did not fear as if he was going to diffuse a bomb!

Reason?  He is confident and passionate about what he does.  And he thrives.

In the same neighborhood, I come across some of us – the white-color professionals employed in IT firms ranging from niche product startups to large service companies.  Many of us lead mundane life style and our unhealthy habits need no mention.   We appear to be too busy to take care of our health, safety and security.  And we are here to ensure the health, safety and security of the IT systems of our customers.  Needless to say, we need to take care of ourselves first. 

In real life, fortunately, good practices do not come with copyrights.  There is no risk of violating copyrights when we follow healthy habits. It is not too late to consider refining our daily routine.

Thanks to Manoj!

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75. The Silver Bullet

Fred Brooks, the author of the popular book ‘The Mythical Man Month’, wrote a paper titled ‘There is No Silver Bullet: Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering’. IEEE Computer published this paper in April 1987. In this paper he says, ‘There is no single development, in either technology or management technique, which by itself promises even one order-of-magnitude improvement within a decade in productivity, in reliability, in simplicity.’   This paper has been discussed and debated in various forums worldwide.

Is there a silver bullet? If yes, what it is? If no, how can we ensure project success? Or how can we ensure on-time high quality deliverables?

In 2008, a celebratory panel took place at the 22nd International Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications in Montreal. The topic of this panel discuss was ‘No Silver Bullet’ Reloaded – A Retrospective on ‘Essence and Accidents of Software Engineering’.  In this discussion, one of the panelists (Ricardo Lopez, Principal Engineer, Qualcomm) said, ‘Striving for excellence is the real silver bullet that will deliver an order-of-magnitude improvement through growth, both personal and professional. The silver bullet must come within, rather than without. WE are THE Silver Bullet – which we achieve by professional excellence.’

Striving for excellence is required at personal level, team level and organizational level.

You are the Silver Bullet!  What are your deliverables? How are you planning to deliver?

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76. The Job Letter

At the time of writing this book, I came to know about a job letter – an email that came to one of my HR friends.   This email came to him from a job seeker holding a post-graduate degree in computer applications.  It read,

dear sir

i done msc 2013 . and . if there is any opening in ur company then plz refer me. sir ur on the great position can u plz help me in this case ..want to start my carrier in in ur company.

regard

Amit

This is not the first time I am seeing a job letter like this.  Almost fifty percent of job letters from fresh graduates and junior engineers appear in this form.  It is sad that the current generation of students and young engineers - many of them but not all, are adopting the so-called ‘SMS’ short-cuts. It does not go well in business communication.

Let me tell you another shocking thing.  Job letters like these do not carry a resume. Yes. There is no PDF or MS-Word attachment.  Obviously, I do not volunteer to ask for a resume.  Aspirants like Amit, never bother to verify their original email and share the resume either.  

I have changed the name and a few other details to conceal the identity of the sender in this email. The point here is the importance of understanding what to deliver and figuring out how to deliver it.

Remember, when you are seeking a job, your job letter and resume are the deliverables.  You have to deliver it right; otherwise, you cannot get what you want.  There is no other way about it!

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4.1 Seek to Understand                         Table of Contents                      6. Workplace Challenges