So, we’ve all disparaged Waterfall software development as overly cumbersome and simply undoable in today’s go-go world. Agile came along and promised to tighten everything up, but in reality most people just say the words ‘agile’ and they really mean ‘cram waterfall methods into 2 week segments’. (“Manifesto“? Really? The last guys to use that word didn’t do so well.)
Here is my new proposal for software and project management: The Fractal Method.
The Fractal Method will take 3-5 core principles and apply them at all levels. Just as a fractal equation takes 3-5 variables in some algorithm and applies them at any scale (kilometer or millimeter level), the Fractal Method for project method will take 3-5 core principals and apply them at large application development as well as small tasks. This seems stupidly simple, but that’s one of my first suggestions for ‘Core Principles’: keep things stupidly simple.
To implement The Fractal Method, make sure of the following:
- Get all the business people and developers in a room and tell them that we’re all going to follow the Fractal Method.
- Explain that the method means that we’re all signing on to 5 core principles, and we’re going to decide them right now.
- Make sure the Core Principles are short and simple enough to be memorized by EVERYONE
- Play a game so that everyone begins to memorize them.
- Go sing some Karaoke together, because everything will be great from now on
Anything beyond this, in my opinion, is hand-waving and/or bullshit project management fluff. PMs make decent money, and for some reason it’s all too tempting for a PM to schmooze the bosses with fancy methods and drawings and charts to show that they’re worth all that money, when I would much rather pay them to actually get shit done.
With that, here are my Core Principles (if we were to deploy the Fractal Method):
- Keep things stupidly simple. Call bullshit on complex proposals and passive-voice responses
- Write everything down in a common area. Wikis are nice. So are white boards in the hallway
- Divide by 3. Divide each task into 3 subtasks until each item is less than 1 day’s worth of work
- 20 Minutes. Meetings are never longer than 20 minutes. If you didn’t decide everything, that’s okay, because you can meet again later, but 20 minutes was enough to give people things to do between now and the next meeting.
- Results win. Results are worth more than estimations or plans
There ya go. I think I’ll start writing a book.
Well, I’ve been here in Tokyo a week, and have yet to go sing karaoke. As it is, I’ve been back and forth between Japan, Korea, and China for 20 years now, and I’ve only been to karaoke 3 times. Here’s how it usually goes down: someone in the office [misguidedly] decides that Karaoke is a good idea, and books a room (a.k.a. “karaoke box”, and no that’s not a euphemism– get your mind out of the gutter). We all go, start drinking, and start singing. In general, it’s an okay time, if only because the office is buying all the whiskey sours you can drink and savoury snacks you can munch. Unfortunately, not all of us humans can sing, and even less of us can perform. But the kicker is: are you sure you want to perform in front of people you want to take you seriously in a meeting the next morning?
Karaoke Do’s:
- Drink. Drink a lot. Don’t drink so much that you pass out, because your co-workers will draw things on your forehead.
- Sing Japanese enka ballads. To be honest, they are the only songs that sound half-decent in karaoke.
- That’s about it.
Karaoke Don’ts:
- Don’t sing heavy metal rock songs. You’re not David Lee Roth, nor are you Steven Tyler. Even if Diamond Dave were to show up in your karaoke box (again, no euphemism), are you sure you’d want to hear him singing ‘Jump’ to a pre-recorded half-assed track 4 feet in front of you ?
- If you’re a gaijin, and don’t understand Japanese/Korean, you’ll likely find your friends shoving the Elvis Presley or Beatles or Animals onto your lap. Resist this urge, unless you want to make everyone depressed. House of the Rising Sun is a kick-ass song, but only because that singer takes it that seriously and pulls if off, and that organ solo is the greatest organ solo of all time.
- Don’t just sit there and thumb through the catalog looking for the next track. This is the most common death of karaoke night: 6 people with their noses buried in the song catalog, fearing what to sing when their turn comes around, and simultaneously embarrassed to make eye contact with the schnook up in front of the room belting out an off-pitch Madonna track.
- Don’t stay for more than 90 minutes. You should be good and loaded by then, to the point where you’re willing to sing on the train with no backing music required. Why pay the room fee at that point?
- Beware of the whiskey goggles. These are people you work with, and it doesn’t matter how much she seems to look like Gwen Stefani up there with the Mic– you’ll regret it later. Remember there are not enough people here to hide your flirting, like you did at that one Christmas Party.
- When someone invariably passes out, don’t try to help. You’re blotto yourself, and you’ll just cause more trouble. Just amuse yourself quietly by drawing on their foreheads and wait for the paramedics.
So, there ya go.
As goes Tokyo, so the rest of the world will follow. This is hard to swallow for women’s fashion, but it certainly holds true for cell phones, personal electronics, and violence comics. I’m in Tokyo, and here’s my prediction: the laptop’s days are numbered.
People want portable computing, no doubt. However, the market is quickly being divided into two camps: larger laptops for 20-something hipsters in studio apartments where the laptop really doesn’t go anywhere but cannot take up the entire desk, and small palm-tops that carry all the power of a “laptop” but actually fit in your pocket, aka, the palm-top.
My wife wanted a smaller (10 inch screen) laptop, but we are hard-pressed to find one at Yodobashi or Yamada Denki. My theory was confirmed by 3 different salesmen: either go bigger for the unportable all-in-one (with georgeous 19″ screens), or go down to the palm-top tablets. It is worth mentioning that, here in Japan, this laptop comes with a TV tuner, and serves as the entire media center: DVD player, TV, mp3 player, and AV anime download-o-rama. For what it’s worth, the Playstation3 also does all of these (including a browser) along with some kick-ass games, and just needs a nice LCD screen.
The only thing that may prevent the death of the laptop in the US is the college system that allows laptops (Japan does not)– students need something that fits on a desk, gets hauled from class to class, and has a big enough screen to watch ’scrubs’ or ‘chuck’ or whatever the kids are into lately.
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