Deliberate Discovery

Dan North considers that ignorance is the major roadblock on the way to success, presenting strategies and techniques for reducing it, delivering software in a more deterministic and less riskier way.

Transcript

1. Deliberate Discovery Dan North – DRW Trading
2. Imagine you got to redo your project... ...completely from scratch – with the same objective – with the same people – with the same constraints ...except – you knew then what you know now – you had 20/20 foresight Something is holding us back © Dan North, DRW 2
3. Theory of Constraints There is currently a constraint Any inventory behind the constraint is waste Any time not addressing the constraint is waste But you don’t know where the constraint is! © Dan North, DRW 3
4. Ignorance is the constraint Ignorance is multivariate – What kinds of ignorance are slowing you down? You are ignorant (to some degree) about... – your domain – the nature of the problem – your incumbent technologies – other possible technologies – organisational constraints – relationships with stakeholders ...and you might not even know! © Dan North, DRW 4
5. Ignorance reduces in steps oh. Oh! Crap. So can we influence the reduction of ignorance? © Dan North, DRW 5
6. Can you prepare for the oh crap moments? This time we’ll know better This time it’ll be different This time we’ll come in on time This time will be exactly like the other times! © Dan North, DRW 6
7. Deliberate discovery Assume you are always operating in ignorance Assume some specific axis of ignorance is your current constraint Improve throughput by actively addressing ignorance Second-order ignorance is a given © Dan North, DRW 7
8. We are wired to resist this We suffer with attribution bias We suffer with confirmation bias ...but not as badly as everyone else! © Dan North, DRW 8
9. Remember how the project started? You got everyone in a room You decomposed the problem into stories – and more stories – and more stories You estimated the stories – and estimated – and estimated Was that really the best use of your time? © Dan North, DRW 9
10. So how can we apply this? Software has a half-life Shorter half-life means less 2OI – less opportunity to not know what I don’t know So why not rewrite rather than redevelop? – with multiple overlapping implementations © Dan North, DRW 10
11. Deliberate discovery in planning Plan for at least some unexpected bad things Try natural planning (GTD) 1. Purpose 2. Mission/vision/goals 3. Brainstorm 4. Organise 5. Next actions Figure out your axes of ignorance. Then do it again. Beware the perils of fractal estimation © Dan North, DRW 11
12. Deliberate discovery in analysis Don’t fear “analysis paralysis” – as long as it’s reducing relevant ignorance Ethnography – What are your stakeholders caring about? – What should they be caring about? Play it forward – Who are you trying to reach? – What do you want their experience to be? Understanding the domain is a whole team activity © Dan North, DRW 12
13. Deliberate discovery in programming Spike-and-stabilise – learn through evolving the “spike” – choose to stabilise later – deferred, test-driven testing Design for the second case – you might gonna need it! Indirect discovery Travel in pairs – optimise for learning: delivery will take care of itself © Dan North, DRW 13
14. Deliberate discovery in testing Exploratory testing Randomised testing Not just running the same old automated tests! Good testers already know this © Dan North, DRW 14
15. Deliberate discovery in (dev)ops Get into production early – get anything into production! Design for monitorability – push diagnostics rather than pulling an autopsy – make it easy to listen Design for discoverability – what went wrong? – what’s going wrong – right now? © Dan North, DRW 15
16. Summary You don’t know what you don’t know That ignorance is killing your throughput Sometimes you can’t know what you don’t know For everything else, there’s Deliberate Discovery © Dan North, DRW 16
17. Thank you dnorth@drw.com http://dannorth.net @tastapod © Dan North, DRW 17