DEV Community: Clay Siefken

Don't "Be Careful"

Clay Siefken — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 13:57:39 +0000

My son was watching a kids' TV show next to me on the couch this morning, and the hidden message (and moral of the story) was, "BE CAREFUL." It's a reasonable phrase to introduce to children, who clearly start out with an excess of enthusiasm and a short supply of focus and mindfulness. It says to us, "come back to the present moment and consider the risks," maybe. But then, it also says, "when something goes poorly, it was your fault."

My wife and I have been trying to get a little more precise with how we discuss errors with our kids.

For example, a kid who was hustling through their chores recently placed a bottle of hair detangling spray in the fridge because it was on the counter during clean-up time.

At work, some errors, especially ones that appear on the public-facing radar, get handled with "Root Cause Analysis" (or sometimes, "Post-Mortem"). The idea is to walk through the various "five whys" behind the problem.

Contributing Factors:

Yes, the kiddo was probably distracted, being goofy and the other kids at the time. Because chores are boring, and they weren't "being careful."
One of the chore-age kiddos is still working on reading, so labels aren't helpful. I'm not sure which one it was, but this could be part of it.
The bottle was probably hanging out on a countertop near other bottles after dinner. It did not belong on the counter permanently (and it was probably placed there by an adult).
The evening chores are done independently by design. This is their opportunity to take ownership of bettering our home lives together. So there's no one checking the work in the moment.

In terms of errors, this one is minor. No one was at any risk of putting detangling spray on their pancakes, and a brief period of refrigeration did not seem to hurt anything. I did not even bother discussing it with the kids.

Mistakes run a full spectrum, from barely-detectable through catastrophic. Thinking through this activity when the stakes are low allows us to gain a degree of comfort and familiarity with these concepts. We may not be able to control the final outcomes of the processes we participate in, but we all shape our environments, we participate in shared routines, and we each have our individual habits.

You will find, in more safety-critical applications, that the role of an individual's state of mind is reduced. I can't say for sure, but I doubt that the operating manuals for a nuclear submarine include heavy use of the phrase "be careful."

Being distracted is just part of being human. That's why we don't give out driver's licenses to kids as soon as they are tall enough to reach the pedals. As a rule, children are physiologically less able to maintain the focus required to operate heavy machinery compared to most adults. Which isn't saying much, because even adults are massively distractable and we now live in an age where the demands on our attention are intense and frequent.

Sidebar: acknowledging this aspect of human nature can get strangely political, because one of the differences between progressive and conservative outlooks includes a differing perspective on the role of individual liberty and individual responsibility. This whole conversation might even call into question the moral rectitude of reward and punishment for what, taken in sum, often comes down to luck of the draw. But that's not my point, here. I'm talking about the design of shared processes and routines, not society at large. Let's tackle that some other time.

"Be careful" reads a lot like "you failed, try harder not to fail next time." Or possibly, "worry more in these situations, there are risks here."

I would argue that we are in an anxiety glut already in our modern lives. We don't need more cause to fret about details.

If a task must succeed - yes, try to induce the appropriate frame of mind in the person executing the task. But more to the point, structure the environment in direct proximity to the task so that it has a lower probability of failure.

Reading List:

Brene Brown’s work on Shame - it's all over, and it's anathema to meaningful relationships at home and work
Nudge by Thaler - we can structure decisioning environments to encourage better decisions, which has a very "UX" feel to it
Atomic Habits by Clear - habits eat goals for breakfast. If you want high-quality outputs, create high-quality habits
Accelerate by Forsgren et al - same as with the Clear book, organizations that have mastered their own habits end up winning. DevOps is full of examples where a task is made to succeed more frequently by being automated out of existence.

Soylent Green and Conway’s Law

Clay Siefken — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 17:54:28 +0000

So I was just dragging some tickets around our board, observing the links between work items and how they really are like little microcosms of our social networks at work. Anyone who has been following along with the trends of microservices and loosely-coupled team structures may be familiar with calling this class of phenomenon to be, “Conway’s Law.”

Any organization that designs a system (defined broadly) will produce a design whose structure is a copy of the organization's communication structure.

Mel Conway

This is no big shocker when you think about it, and many of us have felt this way on an instinctual level for years. If you have broken social systems at work, you will have broken technological systems at work. That’s how it goes.

Or, to summarize, Software is People. IT'S MADE OUT OF PEOPLE!!

It's OK to Not Be Perfect

Clay Siefken — Fri, 26 Jun 2020 03:49:00 +0000

Lowe's Customer Support had something to teach me today about perfection.

Having had a very poor experience recently with a different big box store when trying to purchase a different appliance, my wife and I were a little skeptical about picking up our new dishwasher. With the prior retailer (let's call them "Sub-Optimal Purchase"), our delivery date came and went with a confused local delivery driver calling us to report that he had no information, an hour on hold with multiple transfers, another hour on hold via their chat on their web site. This was a process that ended with no appliance.

With the dishwasher, we also ordered online, and I made the questionable choice of heading to pick up the appliance within 30 minutes of close. In a panic, I called the store. No one picked up. I called again, chose different menus. No answer. Shoot, I figured. Another store that simply doesn't care about their customers. Another poor shopping experience. Sigh.

When I walked in the store, however, nothing could be further from the truth. After one short (socially-distant, mask-wearing) conversation with the knowledgeable staff member, the box was in the back of our vehicle and I was driving home. Done!

I puzzled at the stark contrast between my expectations based on the failed phone calls and the smooth checkout. How could Lowe's do such a dumpy job with picking up the phone and then just absolutely kill it at their front desk game? It's simple. The front desk people were serving the people who were on site before picking up their phones. Boom! Mind blown. They weren't perfect, and that's okay!

At home and at work, I see the same struggle again and again for many people. It's hard, in challenging times, to choose what to fail at. But you will definitely not be perfect at everything. And if you try, you will barely even be good at any of it. What the staff at Lowe's Home Improvement taught me is, to understand what is key - what is the most important thing - and focus on that.

In Lean methodologies, they call the act of spreading oneself too thin, a failure to limit "WIP," or Work In Progress. Indeed, I can't tell you how many times I have failed to deliver anything because I was trying to deliver everything. It is such a basic and beautiful concept, that I have considered getting it tattooed on me.

The Voltaire quote I love along these lines reportedly goes, "Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien," or "the perfect is the enemy of the good."

The dishwasher got installed. It's not bolted down completely yet, and it's not as quiet as the one that broke earlier this week, but we are back in the business of getting dishes washed quickly. It'll do.

So. Go forth, folks, and be good.

Fixing Tech Debt is Like Organizing Your Tupperware Drawer

Clay Siefken — Fri, 29 May 2020 23:33:54 +0000

The trouble is not convincing anyone that it needs to be done. The trouble is deciding that any one lid is the lid that you can't tolerate being precariously balanced on the pile any longer. The trouble is deciding when to fix it.

What many people understand intuitively at home is that the secret is, every lid is the one you shouldn't tolerate being out of place. And the time is now. In practice, it's okay to let a lid stay out of place while you rescue your toddler or corgi from running out into the street. Be sane. But don't go buying more tupperware if your drawer looks like mine did. Fix what you've got first.

Likewise, don't tolerate bugs. Don't tolerate slowness. Fix what you've got before you add more, because it won't be easier later. It only gets tougher the longer you wait.

One of the challenges of this approach is that you'll find a fact about all the things you want to do: you can't afford to do them all well. There just isn't enough time. You need to be ruthless about scope. Let go of some treasured ideas that you aren't going to be able to get working in a reasonable timeframe. Cut it down.

You don't need those mismatched lids. How often do you really need to freeze that much stuff, anyway? Marie Kondo that trash. It does not spark joy.