Tag Archives: Software Quality

Why Software Estimation is (Often) Useless

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For 12 years, I blogged and wrote a whole bunch. For the past year and a half, I’ve let myself be pulled away from so many of the things that make me me… including writing. Today I heard one of the best anecdotes ever, and it’s the spark that will be pulling me back in. (Thanks, John.)

So here it is! It has to do with software estimation. Not only is it difficult to accurately estimate how long it’s going to take someone to do a programming (or similarly technical) task, the act of estimating often does not add any value at all. Estimation is a bad thing, especially if you’re trying to be Agile.

(And if you’re in a client/contractor relationship, you’ll have discovered that estimates are the lifeblood of the relationship, even as they drain all the life and all the blood out of the relationship, slowly and deliberately.)

Sometimes I get caught asking engineers for estimates even when the task we’re embarking on is new, unknown, uncertain, and requiring lots of learning and exploration and discovery. I should know better. But I cave, because the concept of the software estimate is so enticing: with a good estimate, I’ll know exactly how much time someone will need to spend working on a task that’s still kind of nebulous and mostly unknown. (That was a joke.)

My friend John shared the best anecdote ever today about why software estimation is so frustrating (liberally embellished):

Imagine that you’re standing on a hill looking down at a labyrinth, or a corn maze. It’s reasonably small… you can see that the corn maze is definitely doable, you can see a couple paths in and out, and the entire maze is a similar size to other mazes you’ve successfully found your way out of. So you’re pretty sure once you get to the entrance, you’ll find your way out.

But there’s no way you can say exactly how long it will take you to escape. Maybe you’ll run right through from start to finish, and it will be smooth. Maybe you’ll get stuck in the beginning, and spend a long time before winding your way out. Maybe you’ll run right close to the end, but have no idea you’re a few feet away from the exit, and you’ll get stuck there for a while.

And maybe you’ll make it halfway through, get lost, go in circles, and eventually just die in the maze.

Problem is, I can tell you how long it’s taken me to get across comparable mazes, but I have no way of knowing how long it will take me to escape from this maze, and just having another engineer in the maze to pair with me and see things I’m maybe not seeing is no guarantee at all that either of us will get us. Statistically, we’ll probably make it out, but the estimate I give you is just a guess.

Unfortunately, it’s a guess that’s going to make a lot of people unhappy, no matter what. Because even if I make it out of the maze fast this time, then they’ll expect that I’ll zoom through the next maze.

– John

Top 10 Business Books You Should Read in 2020

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I read well over a hundred books a year, and review many for Quality Management Journal and Software Quality Professional. Today, I’d like to bring you my TOP 10 PICKS out of all the books I read in 2019. First, let me affirm that I loved all of these books — it was really difficult to rank them. The criteria I used were:

  1. Is the topic related to quality or improvement? The book had to focus on making people, process, or technology better in some way. (So even though Greg Satell’s Cascades provided an amazing treatment of how to start movements, which is helpful for innovation, it wasn’t as closely related to the themes of quality and improvement I was targeting.)
  2. Did the book have an impact on me? In particular, did it transform my thinking in some way?
  3. Finally, how big is the audience that would be interested in this book? (Although some of my picks are amazing for niche audiences, they will be less amazing for people who are not part of that group; they were ranked lower.)
  4. Did I read it in 2019? (Unfortunately, several amazing books I read at the end of 2018 like Siva Vaidhyanathan’s Antisocial Media.)

#10 – Understanding Agile Values & Principles (Duncan)

Duncan, Scott. (2019). Understanding Agile Values & Principles. An Examination of the Agile Manifesto. InfoQ, 106 pp. Available from https://www.infoq.com/minibooks/agile-values-principles

The biggest obstacle in agile transformation is getting teams to internalize the core values, and apply them as a matter of habit. This is why you see so many organizations do “fake agile” — do things like introduce daily stand-ups, declare themselves agile, and wonder why the success isn’t pouring in. Scott goes back to the first principles of the Agile Manifesto from 2001 to help leaders and teams become genuinely agile.

#9 – Risk-Based Thinking (Muschara)

Muschara, T. (2018). Risk-Based Thinking: Managing the Uncertainty of Human Error in Operations. Routledge/Taylor & Francis: Oxon and New York. 287 pages.

Risk-based thinking is one of the key tenets of ISO 9001:2015, which became the authoritative version in September 2018. Although clause 8.5.3 from ISO 9001:2008 indirectly mentioned risk, it was not a driver for identifying and executing preventive actions. The new emphasis on risk depends upon the organizational context (clause 4.1) and the needs and expectations of “interested parties” or stakeholders (clause 4.2).

Unfortunately, the ISO 9001 revision does not provide guidance for how to incorporate risk-based thinking into operations, which is where Muschara’s new book fills the gap. It’s detailed and complex, but practical (and includes immediately actionable elements) throughout. For anyone struggling with the new focus of ISO 9001:2015, this book will help you bring theory into practice.

#8 – The Successful Software Manager (Fung)

Fung, H. (2019). The Successful Software Manager. Packt Publishing, Birmingham UK, 433 pp.

There lots of books on the market that provide technical guidance to software engineers and quality assurance specialists, but little information to help them figure out how (and whether) to make the transition from developer to manager. Herman Fung’s new release fills this gap in a complete, methodical, and inspiring way. This book will benefit any developer or technical specialist who wants to know what software management entails and how they can adapt to this role effectively. It’s the book I wish I had 20 years ago.

#7 – New Power (Heimans & Timms)

Heiman, J. & Timms, H. (2018). New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World – and How to Make it Work For You. Doubleday, New York, 325 pp.

As we change technology, the technology changes us. This book is an engaging treatise on how to navigate the power dynamics of our social media-infused world. It provides insight on how to use, and think in terms of, “platform culture”.

#6 – A Practical Guide to the Safety Profession (Maldonado)

Maldonado, J. (2019). A Practical Guide to the Safety Profession: The Relentless Pursuit (CRC Focus). CRC Press: Taylor & Francis, Boca Raton FL, 154 pp.

One of the best ways to learn about a role or responsibility is to hear stories from people who have previously served in those roles. With that in mind, if you’re looking for a way to help make safety management “real” — or to help new safety managers in your organization quickly and easily focus on the most important elements of the job — this book should be your go-to reference. In contrast with other books that focus on the interrelated concepts in quality, safety, and environmental management, this book gets the reader engaged by presenting one key story per chapter. Each story takes an honest, revealing look at safety. This book is short, sweet, and high-impact for those who need a quick introduction to the life of an occupational health and safety manager.

# 5 – Data Quality (Mahanti)

Mahanti, R. (2018). Data Quality: Dimensions, Measurement, Strategy, Management and Governance. ASQ Quality Press, Milwaukee WI, 526 pp.

I can now confidently say — if you need a book on data quality, you only need ONE book on data quality. Mahanti, who is one of the Associate Editors of Software Quality Professional, has done a masterful job compiling, organizing, and explaining all aspects of data quality. She takes a cross-industry perspective, producing a handbook that is applicable for solving quality challenges associated with any kind of data.

Throughout the book, examples and stories are emphasized. Explanations supplement most concepts and topics in a way that it is easy to relate your own challenges to the lessons within the book. In short, this is the best data quality book on the market, and will provide immediately actionable guidance for software engineers, development managers, senior leaders, and executives who want to improve their capabilities through data quality.

#4 – The Innovator’s Book (McKeown)

McKeown, M. (2020). The Innovator’s Book: Rules for Rebels, Mavericks and Innovators (Concise Advice). LID Publishing, 128 pp.

Want to inspire your teams to keep innovation at the front of their brains? If so, you need a coffee table book, and preferably one where the insights come from actual research. That’s what you’ve got with Max’s new book. (And yes, it’s “not published yet” — I got an early copy. Still meets my criteria for 2019 recommendations.)

#3 – The Seventh Level (Slavin)

Slavin, A. (2019). The Seventh Level: Transform Your Business Through Meaningful Engagement with Customer and Employees. Lioncrest Publishing, New York, 250 pp.

For starters, Amanda is a powerhouse who’s had some amazing marketing and branding successes early in her career. It makes sense, then, that she’s been able to encapsulate the lessons learned into this book that will help you achieve better customer engagement. How? By thinking about engagement in terms of different levels, from Disengagement to Literate Thinking. By helping your customers take smaller steps along this seven step path, you can make engagement a reality.

#2 – Principle Based Organizational Structure (Meyer)

Meyer, D. (2019). Principle-Based Organizational Structure: A Handbook to Help You Engineer Entrepreneurial Thinking and Teamwork into Organizations of Any Size. NDMA, 420 pp.

This is my odds-on impact favorite of the year. It takes all the best practices I’ve learned over the past two decades about designing an organization for laser focus on strategy execution — and packages them up into a step-by-step method for assessing and improving organizational design. This book can help you fix broken organizations… and most organizations are broken in some way.

#1 Story 10x (Margolis)

Margolis, M. (2019). Story 10x: Turn the Impossible Into the Inevitable. Storied, 208 pp.

You have great ideas, but nobody else can see what you see. Right?? Michael’s book will help you cut through the fog — build a story that connects with the right people at the right time. It’s not like those other “build a narrative” books — it’s like a concentrated power pellet, immediately actionable and compelling. This is my utility favorite of the year… and it changed the way I think about how I present my own ideas.

Hope you found this list enjoyable! And although it’s not on my Top 10 for obvious reasons, check out my Introductory Statistics and Data Science with R as well — I released the 3rd edition in 2019.

There’s a Fly in the Milk (and a Bug in the Software)

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Where “software bugs” got their name — the dead moth stuck in a relay in Harvard’s Mark II in 1947. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug

As one does, I spent a good part of this weekend reading the Annual Report of the Michigan Dairymen’s Association. It provides an interesting glimpse into the processes that have to be managed to source raw materials from suppliers, to produce milk and cream and butter, and to cultivate an engaged and productive workforce.

You might be yelling at your screen right now. DairyMEN’s? Aren’t we beyond that now? What’s wrong with them? The answer is: nothing. This is an annual report from 1915. Your next question is probably what could the dairymen be doing in 1915 that would possibly be interesting for production and operations managers in 2019?  The answer here, surprisingly, is a lot. Except for the overly formal and old-timey word choices, the challenges and concerns encountered in the dairy industry are remarkably consistent over time.

It turns out that flies were a particular concern in 1915 — and they remain a huge threat to quality and safety in food and beverage production today:

  • “…an endless war should be waged against the fly.”
  • “[avoid] the undue exposure of the milk cooler to dust and flies.”
  • “The same cows that freshen in July and August will give more milk in December it seems to me… because at that time of year the dairyman has flies to contend with…”
  • “Flies are known to be great carriers of bacteria, and coming from these feeding places to the creamery may carry thousands of undesirable bacteria direct to the milk-cans or vats.”

In a December 2018 column in Food Safety Tech, Chelle Hartzer describes not one but three (!!!) different types of flies that can wreak havoc in a food production facility. There are house flies that deposit pathogens and contaminants on every surface they land, moth flies that grow in the film inside drains until they start flying too, and fruit flies that can directly contaminate food. All flies need food, making your food or beverage processing facility a potential utopia for them.

In the controls she presented to manage fly-related hazards, I noticed parallels to controls for preventing and catching bugs in software:

  • Make sanitation a priority. Clean up messes, take out the trash on a daily basis, and clean the insides of trash bins. In software development, don’t leave your messes to other people — or your future self!  Bake time into your development schedule to refactor on a regular basis. And remember to maintain your test tools! If you’re doing test-driven development with old tools, even your trash bins may be harboring additional risks.
  • Swap outdoor lighting. In food production facilities, it’s important to use lighting that doesn’t bring the flies to you (particularly at night). Similarly, in software, examine your environment to make sure there are no “bug attractors” like lack of communication or effective version control, dependencies on buggy packages or third party tools, or lack of structured and systematic development processes.
  • Install automatic doors to limit the amount of time and space available for flies to get in to the facility. In software, this relates to limiting the complexity of your code and strategically implementing testing, e.g. test-driven development or an emphasis on hardening the most critical and/or frequently used parts of your system.
  • Inspect loading and unloading areas and seal cracks and crevices. Keep tight seals around critical areas. The “tight seals” in software development are the structured, systematic processes related to verifying and validating your code. This includes design reviews, pair programming, sign-offs, integration and regression testing, and user acceptable testing.
  • Clean drains on a regular basis. The message here is that flies can start their lives in any location that’s suitable for their growth, and you should look for those places and keep them sanitized too. In software, this suggests an ongoing examination of technical debt. Where are the drains that could harbor new issues? Find them, monitor them, and manage them.

Although clearly there’s a huge difference between pest management in food and beverage production and managing code quality, process-related pests have been an issue for at least a century — and likely throughout history. What are the flies in your industry, and what are you doing to make sure they don’t contaminate your systems and bring you down?

Data Quality is Key for Asset Management in Data Science

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This post was motivated by two recent tweets by Dr. Diego Kuonen, Principal of Statoo Consulting in Switzerland (who you should definitely follow if you don’t already – he’s one of the only other people in the world who thinks about data science and quality). First, he shared a slide show from CIO Insight with this clickbaity title, bound to capture the attention of any manager who cares about their bottom line (yeah, they’re unicorns):

“The Best Way to Use Data to Cut Costs? Delete It.”

I’m so happy this message is starting to enter corporate consciousness, because I lived it throughout the decade of the 2000’s — working on data management for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). I published several papers during that time that present the following position on this theme (links to the full text articles are at the bottom of this post):

  • First, storing data means you’ve saved it to physical media; archiving data implies that you are storing data over a longer (and possibly very long) time horizon.
  • Even though storage is cheap, don’t store (or archive) everything. Inventories have holding costs, and data warehouses are no different (even though those electrons are so, so tiny).
  • Archiving data that is of dubious quality is never advised. (It’s like piling your garage full of all those early drafts of every paper you’ve ever written… and having done this, I strongly recommend against it.)
  • Sometimes it can be hard to tell whether the raw data we’re collecting is fundamentally good or bad — but we have to try.
  • Data science provides fantastic techniques for learning what is meant by data quality, and then automating the classification process.
  • The intent of whoever collects the data is bound to be different than whoever uses the data in the future.
  • If we do not capture intent, we are significantly suppressing the potential that the data asset will have in the future.

Although I hadn’t seen this when I was deeply enmeshed in the problem long ago, it totally warmed my heart when Diego followed up with this quote from Deming in 1942:

dont-archive-it

 

In my opinion, the need for a dedicated focus on understanding what we mean by data quality (for our particular contexts) and then working to make sure we don’t load up our Big Data opportunities with Bad Data liabilities will be the difference between competitive and combustible in the future. Mind your data quality before your data science. It will also positively impact the sustainability of your data archive.

Papers where I talked about why NOT to archive all your data are here:

  1. Radziwill, N. M., 2006: Foundations for Quality Management of Scientific Data Products. Quality Management Journal, v13 Issue 2 (April), p. 7-21.
  2. Radziwill, N. M., 2006: Valuation, Policy and Software Strategy. SPIE, Orlando FL, May 25-31.
  3. Radziwill, N.M. and R. DuPlain, 2005: A Framework for Telescope Data Quality Management. Proc. SPIE, Madrid, Spain, October 2-5, 2005.
  4. DuPlain, R. F. and N.M. Radziwill, 2006: Autonomous Quality Assurance and Troubleshooting. SPIE, Orlando FL, May 25-31.
  5. DuPlain, R., Radziwill, N.M., & Shelton, A., 2007: A Rule-Based Data Quality Startup Using PyCLIPS. ADASS XVII, London UK, September 2007.

 

Innovation Without Maintenance is (Potentially) Cyberterrorism

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Image Credit: Lucy Glover Photography (http://lucyglover.com/)

Image Credit: Lucy Glover Photography (http://lucyglover.com/)

On July 8th, Wall Street’s software failed (and the WSJ web site went down). United’s planes were grounded for two hours across the entire US. And this all happened only shortly after China’s stocks mysteriously plummeted. Odd coincidence, or carefully planned coordinated cyberattack? Bloggers say don’t worry… don’t panic. Probably not a big deal overall:

Heck, the whole United fleet was grounded last month too… NYSE is one stock exchange among many. The website of a newspaper isn’t important, and the Chinese stocks are volatile… we should not worry that this is a coordinated attack, especially of the dreaded “cyber-terrorist” kind…

The big problem we face isn’t coordinated cyber-terrorism, it’s that software sucks. Software sucks for many reasons, all of which go deep, are entangled, and expensive to fix. (Or, everything is broken, eventually). This is a major headache, and a real worry as software eats more and more of the world.

In a large and complex system, something will ALWAYS be broken. Our job is to make sure we don’t let the wrong pieces get broken and stay broken… and we need to make sure our funding, our policies, and our quality systems reflect this priority.

Once upon a time in the early 2000’s, I worked as a technology manager at a great big telescope called the GBT (not an acronym for great big, but rather Green Bank… where it’s located in West Virginia).

It cost a lot to maintain and operate that telescope… nearly $10M every year. About 10-15% of this budget was spent on software development. Behind all great hardware and instrumentation, there’s great (or at least functional) software that helps you accomplish whatever goals and objectives you have that require the hardware. Even though we had to push forward and work on new capabilities to keep our telescope relevant to the scientists who used it to uncover new knowledge about the universe, we had to continue maintaining the old software… or the whole telescope might malfunction.

It’s not popular to keep putting money into maintenance at the expense of funding innovation. But it’s necessary:

  • Without spending time and money to continuously firm up our legacy systems, we’re increasing the likelihood that they will crash (all on their own), producing devastating impacts (either individually or collectively).
  • Without spending time and money to continuously firm up our legacy systems, we’re also increasing the possibility that some rogue hacker (or completely legitimate domestic or foreign enemy) will be able to trigger some form of devastation that impacts the safety, security, or well-being of many people.

When we choose to support innovation at the expense of regular maintenance and continuous improvement, we’re terrorizing our future selves. Especially if our work involves maintaining software that connects or influences people and their devices. Isn’t that right, Amtrak?

Your Password as a Mantra to Improve Quality Consciousness

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How many times a day do you type in your password? Is it a good password? Is it a password that’s helping you focus the attention of your unconscious on the stuff you want to attract into your business or your life?

A password is essentially a mantra – a “word or sound repeated to aid concentration” – according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. Typically, it’s just a word or string of characters repeated so that we can access the computing resources we need. People often pick passwords or pass phrases that are already memorable – your dog’s name, your kid’s birthday, a secret inside joke – but since the password is already technically a mantra, I think it can be much better used to create something memorable for your future, or to take advantage of an upcoming opportunity! And if you’re required to change your password so frequently at work (like me, every 90 days) this technique helps you remember your password more easily too.

ISO 9000 p. 3.1.5 (formerly ISO 8402:1994) defines quality as “the totality of characteristics of an entity that bear upon its ability to satisfy stated and implied needs.” In industry, we usually think of a product or a process as the entity, and then we work on improving the product’s quality or improving the effectiveness or efficiency of the process. So why don’t we turn it inside out and think of ourselves as the entity?

That’s exactly what I wanted to accomplish by proposing the notion of quality consciousness, which asks the question: “What are the totality of characteristics of YOU that bear upon your ability to satisfy the stated and implied needs of yourself, your communities, and the organizations where you contribute your talent?”

The three aspects of quality consciousness are AWARENESS of what quality means in a particular context, ALIGNMENT of you and your talents with the problem to be solved and the environment in which the problem and its solution are embedded, and the ability to focus your ATTENTION on the problem or situation that needs to be improved.

ATTENTION is a tricky one, though. Not only do you have to tame the distractions that are gnawing at your conscious mind, but your unconscious mind can grab your attention as well. There are plenty of techniques out there for getting your conscious mind to focus, such as David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) methodology. But there aren’t that many techniques that help you focus the attention of your unconscious mind, which is why password-as-mantra is such a useful approach.

Choosing a password-as-mantra can help you focus your unconscious mind on the things you want to achieve in the near term. Why? Because after a while, you don’t even think about entering your password… it’s just part of you… and that’s when your unconscious is actively working with it.

(I’ve been using my password as a mantra for a few years with great results. Other people have apparently figured this out too and are doing it.  I brought the idea up in one of Jeannette Maw’s GVU discussion groups, and it turns out lots of other people are doing it – we just haven’t been talking about it!)

Inspiration Stimulates Productivity and Engagement

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(Image Credit: Doug Buckley of http://hyperactive.to)

I saw this on Facebook earlier today:

Jeannette Maw loved this from Jason Fried’s Rework: “When you’re high on inspiration, you can get two weeks of work done in 24 hours. Inspiration is a time machine that way. Inspiration is a magical thing, a productivity multiplier, a motivator. But it won’t wait for you. Inspiration is a now thing. If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.”

“Yeah, exactly!” echoed the little voice in my head. Inspiration is, hands down, the best way to increase productivity.

I know this because I have experienced it. For example, yesterday, I wasn’t inspired at all. I got about a quarter to a half of the work done that I ordinarily could expect to do in a day. The December before last, I was completely inspired and wrote a 200 page book in 10 days. When it catches you, your job is to identify what’s just happened, make use of it, and then enjoy the brilliant time warp it thrusts you into, allowing you to accomplish superhuman knowledge work in compressed amounts of time.

But inspiration is sensitive to environmental conditions. I can’t be inspired when I’m tired. I can’t be inspired when I’m distracted by other things, like reading blog posts on the web or checking for text messages or new tweets on my Droid. I can’t be inspired when I have a cold, and I just want to curl up under a comforter and read. I can’t be inspired when I’m too hot, too cold, or too irritated by a friend or coworker’s antics.

So why, I thought, aren’t we promoting inspiration more in our organizations? Why aren’t we providing programs and environments where people can tap into that natural inspiration and become ultimately productive? And then I realized – we are – sort of. But we call it engagement.

When we are engaged, we are inspired. We tap into that natural flow where we become focused, and directed, and amazingly productive. When we are not engaged, we harbor low productivity, high absenteeism, and contribute to high turnover in our organizations (see, for example, “Great Britain’s Workforce Lacks Inspiration”).

However, I’d also like to propose that engagement is a symptom – a consequence of feeling good and having a high quality consciousness!

Let’s work on the root causes, and focus less on the symptoms.  The root causes of quality consciousness – Awareness, Alignment and Attention – combined with the positive well-being that fuels them, can (and should) be used to cultivate greater engagement in our organizations.

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