Jerry Weinberg, Carrying On His Legacy together

August 31, 2018 – I had written this post months ago, with an eye to growing a small group of Gerald Weinberg fans eager to read his books, but I had not ever posted it. So now I offer it now in honor of Jerry Weinberg, as he very sadly passed away earlier this month. This has been hard on his whole community of followers and on us in the bookclub too.

We originally started with Volume 3, Congruent Action of the series titled Quality Software Management, because several of the people in the Agendashift community were discussing human dynamics and I had brought up the topic of congruence. They seemed interested, so the bookclub was launched with the Congruent Action book. We are currently on Volume 4, Anticipating Change, and will cycle back to Systems Thinking, and First Order Measurement later on.  You can start anywhere in the series and still learn a lot!

I’ve recruited two fellow consultants, Steven Mackenzie, and Christophe Thibaut, to co-host this bookclub with me and it has been running for the better part of a year.  Even though two of us had read the volumes many years back, we decided that a revisit was well worth our time.  Actually Christophe has read the series twice and run a 3 year book club on this series at his company, Octo Technologies, in Paris, years ago.  Still Christophe states he learns new stuff at each new reading.

What’s in it for you?  If you want to connect with other learners, hone your skills as a manager, understand the systems at play in change work, and/or increase your toolset as a consultant, coach or software developer, do join us.

When: Every Friday morning, at 8 a.m .EDT.  We run a very tight ship with a fairly strict agenda in the way we run it, so that we finish on time.  We read just 1 chapter per week.  The approximate reading time is 20 minutes per chapter. After checking in at the start, we introduce new members, check-in, elicit for our initial high level reactions to the chapter.  Then we display the chapter’s pages from the ebook on the screen annotating it with comments as we go, sharing experiences and our connections to the material.

How: To join the discussion slack group, apply to Agendashift community here: https://www.agendashift.com/slack. Navigate to the #bookclub channel for the Zoom session link and chapter that we are on.   The meeting times are generally 8 a.m. EDT, each Friday and it is posted to the channel each week.

Where to get the books:

The 4 QUALITY SOFTWARE MANAGEMENT p-Books can be found as 4 hardbacks

1. SYSTEMS THINKING                   (corresponds to 1,2 below)
2. FIRST-ORDER MEASUREMENT  (corresponds to 3,4 below)
3. CONGRUENT ACTION                 (corresponds to 5, 6 below)
4. ANTICIPATING CHANGE              (corresponds to 7,8,9 below)

The e-books can be found as a whole set: https://leanpub.com/b/qualitysoftware or individually:

1. HOW SOFTWARE IS BUILT
2. WHY SOFTWARE GETS YOU IN TROUBLE
3. HOW TO OBSERVE SYSTEMS
4. RESPONDING TO SIGNIFICANT SOFTWARE EVENTS
5. MANAGING YOURSELF AND OTHERS
6. MANAGING TEAMS CONGRUENTLY
7. BECOMING A CHANGE ARTIST
8. CHANGE PLANNED AND UNPLANNED
9. CHANGE DONE WELL

Jerry Weinberg has been a true hero and will continue to be an influence in the field software engineering – with many books on topics such as quality, management, testing, human interaction dynamics, systems thinking, mental models, giving and receiving feedback, design, and the psychology of programming.  His books are immensely readable and timeless in their subject matter. We never leave a session without some new insights, or connections made to the work we do or aspire to do. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.

RIP Jerry and thank you for writing these wonderful books for us !!

 

The Long Term View – Systems Thinking and Beyond

CDG -> IAD

At the user end of a systemic failure

Waking at 4:30 a.m. from the effects of jet-lag this morning, I tackled some admin work which led me to this unexpected result – a little systems story to frame my passion around what I teach in workshops: communication and systems thinking.

I am an independent contractor with my own business. I HAVE to buy ‘Affordable’ Health Care Act insurance.   I am required also to report address changes  – but not directly to the insurance company – no.  I found that was not possible. I had to report via the healthcare.gov website, and had anticipated it would be a quick ‘address change’.  A day before my departure for a trip to Europe, I embarked on this fascinating address change journey.   What I discovered to my shock and horror was that I was going to be REQUIRED to change health plans mid-year.  Why?  Because apparently the high end plan I had bought at my old address 10 miles south would NOT be available at my new address.  Why? No one could say initially – the guy on the end of the phone line at the old health plan put me on hold to go do some research. He found that only a small carved out geographic area near my old home had access to that plan.   My head started spinning. I had JUST reached my deductible for the year, meaning higher per visit coverage (less out-of-pocket expense) for the rest of the year.  Wait!!! Change plans?  Yes: Return to Go.   Start over.  From scratch.  Sadly, what’s available at the new address are plans with much higher deductibles. So, I am back to square one.  At least I live in a geographic area that HAS plans, I suppose. I see the silver lining, yet muse about how broken the system is. I feel momentarily powerless.

Just now back from my trip abroad and tackling the admin work early this morning, I look for any sign of mail that has my new health plan ID cards. None.  Searching emails. Ok, here it is in Junk mail.  Click on links – ah – yes, I will create a new account.  And then Wham!  I am stuck with an incredible FLAW in the registration process.  No matter what I put into the field for username I get the same error.   I can’t register for an account.  The system says: if you can’t register, ‘just’ call.   Well, it is too early for that.  I pause the task at hand and start writing in frustration.
This is a different sort of systems issue.  Surely I can’t be the first one to report this… Yet, Aetna has taken no action.

My part in fixing the larger mess

I can imagine that both the policy flaw that was surfaced by my address change, and the error in my registration – although vastly different in their origination – might have been avoided with good systems thinking and communication. These are precedents and prerequisites for agile success.

We no longer need problem solvers who only see their accomplishments as  check marks on the issue directly  ahead of them. We need workers who can question everything and say no with integrity and congruence when pressured unreasonably to deliver crappy policies, regulations, and software .  We need to create safe environments where people can speak up their truths without fear.  We need folks who can see both the details and the big picture, work collaboratively and creatively to solve immediate problems with a long term view.

Organizations are under pressure to rapidly create new systems (policies, programs, applications, websites), and to learn rapidly changing technologies, so they sometimes neglect to understand that the starting point of failure is a lack of systems thinking and excellence in communication.