16:15, at my desk, Amsterdam

I am flicking through Kahane’s Solving Tough Problems. He categorises complexity as such:

1. Dynamic. Distance in space and time between cause and effect. Spacial complexity, someone drops a fart and I smell it because he is next to me. Temporal (time) complexity, someone drops a fart from across the room and it takes a minute to reach me.

2. Generative. If something is predicable and known.
3. Social. The amount of values, goals, etc, that a group share.

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Surely, he meant the world! Mu-ahahaha.

My friend Ben's continuing explorations into development. This time he's talking about the parable of the lightbulb... interesting.

A note by Jamie Dobson, Amsterdam Amstel to Rotterdam, 12th of January, 2009.

Note: PDI is an acronym for Power Distance Index. It is a measure of the distance between people in a hierarchy.

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This post has generated a lot of really positive responses. Therefore, I'd like to share it.

http://www.theotherjamiedobson.com/?p=1055

They say software projects become late one day at a time. However, would it be unrealistic to say that they deliver one day at a time too? Consider this scenario, lifted verbatim from real life:

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Life is funny. This blog was (is) partially about my friend Ben, I wrote it yesterday coming into work. Then, today, I got an email about an essay he wrote – a very good essay. When Ben & I worked together I assured him that he would very quickly surpass my skills – and he did. It was my goal to help make him a stronger engineer. More than this, I actually think it’s my duty. I have signed up to some invisible code of ethics that says an engineer must teach other engineers. M. Scott Peck claimed in his book that love is wanting to see others grow – I think Peck is American.

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Read this:

http://www.gridshore.nl/2008/11/15/consultancy-cover-your-ass/

Very often I break a simple rule of consultancy, I fix something I wasn't asked to do. For example, I may be drafted in by a company to bring a project back on track or, sometimes, to teach object technologies (I like this type of work). However, if you are working with a group of people and one of them is incompetent or destructive then that, by definition, is the problem you have to solve first. What this means is that you end up doing a little bit of behaviour changing or some management consulting.

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