Change & Progress. But Not Really.
When I was in college, I majored in Audio Visual & Multi-Media Communications. I really enjoyed that stuff.
I still do.
I also had to also take some crappy other courses to get my diploma. So I did. As you might expect, I don’t remember much of any of those courses, or really even what I took. But as I’ve been progressing through my career, one little nugget of wisdom has stayed with me.
I don’t recall what class it was in, but that really doesn’t matter. We were looking at an advertisement from the 1930’s or 1940’s. Possibly the 1950’s, but I recall it being older than that. It featured a new technology… It was a print ad, published in some magazine or newspaper that’s also not important.
The ad was for a new sofa, one that was easier to clean because you could just hose it down with water, and let it dry. This new fabric technology that would save time. No more hours of shampooing the fabric, or scrubbing, or vacuuming. Let me try and describe the ad… Basically, there was an oval background with a young woman standing in front – just off to the side – of a couch. The woman was holding a garden hose, clearly showing how easy it was to clean this couch.
I know this because of how she was standing, smiling, clearly having a good time.
This isn’t the ad I’m referring to, but it’s one that came up with a quick Google search, and hopefully allows you to get the idea. http://elite.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/1957-ad.jpg
We were discussing how this new technology, to make the couch so easy to clean would reduce the amount of time the young woman would have to spend cleaning. She’d be freed up to do all sorts of other leisurely activities, instead of spending her time cleaning. We were talking about how technology enables us to do things that we never thought possible.
What caught me off guard was when the professor pointed out that it was a woman doing the cleaning in the ad… What if it had been a man?
Preposterous, I thought.
After all, this was an ad from a time before most men and women shared household responsibilities. What madness was this kookie professor trying to get at? If this was a modern ad, sure, it could be a man or a women. But from the 1930’s, or 40’s, or 50’s?
And then the discussion turned to new technologies that do make things better, but remain constrained by a belief of some kind. In this ad, it was that only a women would be doing the cleaning. In spite of the technological advances to make this fabric so easy to clean, the possibility of the young woman not being the one who would be doing the cleaning wasn’t even imaginable.
I wonder what we assume, in 2015, that we can’t change either. What do we just accept as the way things are.
What is our “women do the housework” paradigm?
There’s a discussion going on in the Agile software community about #NoEstimates. I’ve found this very interesting to follow and take part in. Before I get too far down this road, let me say that for me, #NoEstimates is all about looking at why we do certain things the way we do, and asking if there’s a better way to do it. I’m certainly not going to claim to have the answers.
There are those who insist that the only way to responsibly deliver a project is with estimating the work up front. Maybe. But I’m not so sure. I’ve seen too many projects which have been estimated up front fail, because the number of things not included in the estimate blows the project up, taking it over budget, and way off schedule. And what’s worse, is that it’s often not the right thing that gets built, simply because the estimate was done a year – or more – ago, and the market has shifted to make whatever it was no longer relevant.
Just like the creators of that ad couldn’t imagine a time when women wouldn’t be the ones cleaning and doing the housework, there are those who can’t imagine a time when we won’t be estimating software projects up front.
My point is simply that a lot of good can come from questioning and exploring things that we take for granted, which are the status quo of today.
At one point, we thought the world was flat. At one point, we assumed that women would always do the housework. At one point, we thought we needed detail estimate of software projects before we started development.
Questioning and exploring alternatives to what we think we know today can lead us to places we can’t yet imagine or dream.
If you want to read more about #NoEstimates, here are two fantastic places you can do exactly that:
On the topic of Trombones…
I got thinking a bit more about playing my trombone. Something I need to do more. I don’t get to play much any more, but I really did enjoy playing for many years. Maybe I’ll find some others to play with.
I played in orchestras. I played in concert bands. I played in military bands. I played in jazz bands. I played in brass quintets. And I played in other various groups with various other instruments. But the group I enjoyed playing the most with is the brass quintet. There are a bunch of reasons for this, and it very much relates to how I like to work today.
You see, in a quintet, there are five voices. It’s a small group, and you get to really know your peers, and have to work really hard at working well with them. It’s not about any of you individually, but about the five of you together. No one is in charge; there’s no leader, per se. We’re all leaders, and we all have accountability to each other, and to our audience, or customer. It’s just the five of us, all working towards a single, shared common goal. We all have to work together, listening to each other, complementing each other, supporting each other, critiquing each other. If we don’t? Well, there’s no one to hide behind. It’s just us. Each playing our part, which come together to produce something amazingly superior to the sum of our five parts.
It also forces five committed people to be their best, and continually work to improve personally, and each other. There’s nowhere to hide in a quintet. Not that I ever hid in any of the other settings, but it’s not the same when you’re one of a number people playing a similar – or even the same – line of a piece. That doesn’t happen in a quintet. There’s no one else playing your line. It’s just you. It becomes pretty obvious pretty quickly if you’re not pulling your weight. And it’s the same with everyone else in the quintet so they’ve got to be equally committed, and equally interested in being the best they can be, finding ways to get better individually, and helping each other make the quintet as a whole even better.
By the way, if you want to see some of the best musicians in the world, a team who practically invented and popularized the brass quintet, have a look at the Canadian Brass.
Trombones and Agile. Wait… What?
So, this might be less about the trombone. It could be about any musical instrument. But, in my case, it happens to be a trombone. Actually, for many years, it was a bass trombone.
The funny thing about the trombone is that in an orchestra, concert band, or military band, the bass trombone very rarely caries the melody. It very rarely caries the counter melody. There are pieces where the trombone is featured, but really, not most of the pieces in these settings.
If you look at who gets the recognition and rewards, it’s the soloist. It’s not the bass trombone player. Believe me. But, being the bass trombone player, playing the music in front of me, I get a huge amount of personal satisfaction. You see, I know that for that soloist, for that melody, for that thing you reward: I’m the one who made it sound great. Yep. It’s true. The melody of pretty much every piece of music is hollow without the counter melody, the accompaniment, the supporting foundation that allows the melody to sound amazing. And I get to be the one to provide that.
It took me a long time in my career to realize that the role I play with my team is the same. I don’t want to be in the spotlight. Not that I’m not great at what I do – or at least think I am. I am pretty darn good at what I do. But what makes me great as the Scrum Master or Agile Coach is that it’s not about me, and I don’t want to be the focus of anything. I’m just the guy who helps the team be amazing. I’m the guy helping the team remove anything and everything that’s preventing them from delivering great quality code and delivering iterative and incremental business value every single sprint. I’m the guy helping everyone involved with the project work together.
If the team I’m on, the team I’m working with, succeeds, then I’ve succeeded too. It’s not about me. But it’s sure great to see the team succeed, and knowing that I played my part in helping them shine.