Where Saying 'No' Is An Option.

Do you know who the 'idea man' in your project is?

Usually this is going to be a manager who doesn't do any real work or a business analyst who doesn't do any real or even un-real work.

Identifying the idea man is easy:

1. Idea man does not like to be associated with one project for a longer duration.
2. Idea man is bubbling with ideas that he 'thinks' your clients 'must have'.
3. Idea man understands the culture chart and knows the people high up in the pecking order well enough to pull a few strings and get his  ideas of '(not so) nice to have' features or suggestions magically transformed into 'must have' requirements overnight.

Now; the idea man might work with multiple motives; some of which include:

1. Working for the best interest of the organization and the client ---  You may have click the link to capture the underlying tone of sarcasm here.
2. Desperate attempts of finding his place in the larger scheme of things --- and an inability to find healthy ways to over come his insecurities.
3. Showing those pesky programmers their real place.

One of the major thing that differentiates a remarkable environment from a mediocre one is the number of strings the idea-man can pull on genuine builders and story-tellers.

Joel Spolsky's rather famous post on the topic; where he talks about his experience of being attacked by a bunch of these idea-men as a manager on the excel macro team; is rather fascinating. Joel uses his post to tell a fascinating real story:

My first assignment at my first job was working at Microsoft, where I was told to come up with a new macro language strategy for Excel. Pretty soon, I had the first draft of the "Excel Basic" spec (which later evolved into Visual Basic for Applications, but that's another story). Somehow, this mysterious group of people at Microsoft called the "Application Architecture" group got wind of my spec, which must have concerned them, because for some reason they thought that they were in charge of things like macro language strategies, and they asked to see my spec.

I asked around. Who's the Application Architecture group? Nobody seemed to think they were very serious. It turns out that they were a group of just four people, recent hires with PhDs (very unusual for Microsoft). I sent them a copy of my spec and went to meet them, in case they had something interesting to say.

"Blah blah!" said one of them. "Blah blah blah, blah blah blah!" said another. I don't think they quite had anything interesting to say. They were very enamored of the idea of sub-classing and sort of thought that people making macros in Excel wanted to subclass a lot of things. In any case, one of the fellows said, "Well, this is all very interesting. What's next? Who has to approve your spec?"

I laughed. Even though I had only been at Microsoft for a few months, I knew that there was no such thing as somebody approving my spec.

The same story describes the whole string pulling exercise which is a rather common trait amongst idea-men:

This seemed to piss off a guy named Greg Whitten who headed up the App Architecture group. Now, Greg was something like Microsoft employee number 6. He had been around forever; nobody could quite point to anything he had done but apparently he had lunch with Bill Gates a lot and GW-BASIC was named after him.

Greg called a BIG MEETING and proceeded to complain about how the Excel team (meaning me) was screwing up the macro strategy. We pressured him to come up with some specific reasons but his arguments just weren't convincing. I thought it was nice that here I was, a new hire pipsqueak right out of college, arguing with employee number 6 and apparently winning the argument. (Can you imagine that happening at a Grey Flannel Suit company?)

My programming team, headed by Ben Waldman (now a VP at Microsoft) backed me up completely, which was all that really mattered, because the programming team wrote the code and thus had the final say on how things got done.

Joel effectively goes on to describe what made Microsoft a special environment to work at in the very same story:

I was sitting at lunch with some coworkers, in the Redmond sun, when Pete Higgins came up to me. At that time Pete was the general manager for Office -- I knew who he was, of course, but didn't expect that he knew me very well. 

"How's it going, Joel?" he asked. "I hear you've been having some issues with the App Architecture group."

"Oh no!" I said. "Nothing I can't handle."

"Say no more," he said, "I understand." He left. By the next day the rumor had gotten back to me: the App Architecture group was disbanded. Not only that, but each member of the group was sent to a different department at Microsoft, as far apart as possible. I never heard from them again.

While the story is a fascinating example of a work environment where eventual builders are given room to maneuver it is also an interesting case-study of what results in the development an environment where genuine builders who indulge in the act of building stuff can flourish and innovate.

If you've been in the business of building software for any period of time; you've probably found yourself demoing your product to the-idea-man.

The idea-man is usually not an involved client; he is not a regular user; he is not even an active team member --- because all three of these require time and commitment and a typical idea-man has neither time nor commitment.

Chances are; that the idea-man will not even log-in in to your application after you are done with demoing your application to him --- but based on his infinite wisdom and experience --- he is going to leave you with a few ideas that your 'absolutely must' implement.

Once you spot an idea-man; be informed; that he will pull any strings he can to get his ideas implemented.

When that happens:

Does your work environment leave you with no other option besides; dealing with the idea-man diplomatically?

Do you have enough genuine builders or story-tellers around you who are masters in the art of sedating monkeys and getting them out of your way?

Is saying 'no' even an option in your environment; dear reader?

Discuss.

@BuildersAtWorkBookNotice

 Following The Rules Vs. Acting Responsibly And With Passion.

If you have been a reader for this blog for any period of time; you probably know how much respect I have for Processes and Rules.

On one hand; I detest nine-to-five organizations with rules or policies for everything.

On the other hand however; when it comes to my own project; I spend countless hours tweaking my code; fixing the casing of my variable names; measuring lines-of-code-per-function; constantly looking the cyclomatic complexity of the functions; desperately trying to bring the complexity down and indulging in dozens of other painstaking exercises which might sound un-necessary to a young and budding developer.

I even push the idea of constantly following 'DRY' and 'YAGNI' --- sometimes a little too strongly to disappoint others.

Isn't all of what I do in my projects a classic illustration of me contradicting myself?

Am I not going against the very core thought-process of having little or no respect for rules?

While I go out there; comment and claim that contradictions do not exist; isn't my behavior on my projects a classic example me contracting my own thought-process of having very little respect for rules and the status-quo?

Of-course it is not.

Allow me; dear reader; to put my point across to you using a rather inspiring post written by Jurgen Appelo.  Jurgen describes the idea of following rules using the example of driving. He explains:

I love driving my car. It’s a male thing, I suppose. It’s somewhere in my Y-chromosome. I embrace every opportunity I can find to hop in my car and start driving.

And (like every other male on the planet) I think I’m a good driver.

You see, I always watch the other cars around me on the road. When changing lanes I check all sides and mirrors. My distance to the cars in front of me is enough to allow for occasional extreme speed reduction.

I match my speed with the weather conditions. I play music in my car (loudly) but I don’t wear headphones. I don’t use my mobile phone while driving. And, as far as I can tell, I am the only person in the world who is able not to cross the lines that mark my lane while taking a curve to the left or the right.

I have adopted this behavior myself.

I might have copied some stuff from other people, but it was my choice to learn these rules and use them, always.

Jurgen illustrates the difference between following-the-rules and acting-responsibly. He explains:

Only thinking and talking about something doesn’t make it so. Just like making up official rules won’t turn your business into a success, traffic signs won’t make you a good driver.

In fact, I often don’t notice many of the signs.

It is my attitude and actual behavior on the road that makes all the difference.

Craftsmanship is something agile doesn’t introduce by itself. And just thinking and talking about it doesn’t give you successful projects.

Managers who want better results must acknowledge that they have to actively change the attitudes and behavior of their people. They must stimulate craftsmanship and discipline. Or else...

Or else accidents will happen.

They say changing people's behavior starts by giving them a good example. So let the world know that yesterday night, while many people were watching the Champions League Final, I myself was learning how to do test-driven development with Python.

I hope to have inspired you.

If you live in the same planet as I do; you will be given rules at every step and corner of your personal and professional life. Every time you are given a rule; you can do multiple things with it. You can follow it; question why; bend it; tweak it; work around it or sometimes even break it outright blatantly and shamelessly.

Remember; what you do with your rules will *not* decide anything --- your attitude; passion for what you do; wisdom; competence; ability-to-make-good-judgment-calls and responsible behavior will.

Go break the rules that don't make sense to you and make new ones that do.

If nothing makes sense fly free --- but flock responsibly.

I wish you good luck.

Stupidity Is Not Always Loud And Clear.

Of all the seemingly harmless things that destroy projects in general and organizations in particular; thoughtless optimism mixed with wishful thinking is one of the items that tops the chart. Every year countless startups fall flat on their face and every year new startups with more thoughtless optimism replace them.

The amazing story of the shut-down of fly-clear by Joel Spolsky is a classic tale of thoughtless optimism gone wrong. The story is Intriguing of multiple fronts. The first front is the actual service that fly-clear was providing; which Joel describes rather well. He explains:

Here's how it worked while it was in business. You paid $200 for a one-year membership. You underwent a big, complicated background check to prove that you were extra-super-trustworthy.

In exchange, in a few big airports, you got to skip to the front of the TSA line for screening.

Now, you didn't skip the screening itself. You still went through the X-ray machine and had to remove your shoes, belt, pocket contents, laptops, and plastic quart zip-lock bag of toiletries.

You just got to cut to the front of the line.

A few people signed up. In certain airports, it was, indeed, worth actual money to cut to the front of the line.

This wasn't Clear's actual business plan. The actual business plan was that Clear would do detailed background checks on travelers, who would then be trusted to bypass security completely because they were extra-super-trustworthy

When TSA rejected the whole idea of skipping the security check and only allowed fly-clear users to just move to the front of the security check line; still leaving the requirement of a security check mandatory; Clear continued with their initial plan --- which was to charge money for their service and continue to do detailed background checks on all their users before they registered them.

Joel describes the stupidity rather articulately:

At this point, and here's the interesting part, at this point, a rational businessperson would say, "Well, does the Clear idea still make sense if we can’t actually let you skip the screening?"

OK, maybe it still makes sense to charge to skip to the front of the line. Maybe there's a business model in that.

In that case, though, why did they still do background checks? It doesn't make any sense.

The environment changed. It turns out that Clear's business model of prescreening wasn't going to be possible. But they kept doing it anyway. What kind of organizational dysfunction does it take to completely ignore the changed circumstances and keep at a money-losing business?

Joel ends the post with a note of wisdom and sarcasm:

What's even funnier is that Clear could probably have been profitable if they had just skipped the one unnecessarily stupid part of their business model: the detailed background checks on all their customers.

Nobody at Clear did any thinking.

They had a business model, the business model wasn't actually possible, everybody knew it, and they still plugged away at it. Thoughtless optimism. I don't know whether to salute them or laugh.

I find these stories really fascinating because based on the little facts that we as outsiders are privy to; these stories allow us to do black-box-investigations into huge colossal fu@#kups-ups orchestrated by smart people who had the means and the measures to organize fu@#kups of this magnitude.

Joel does his fascinating and thought provoking analysis of the story and comes to a simple logical conclusion --- Nobody at clear did any thinking.

Take that analysis one step forward and you realize that thoughtless optimism in real life; isn't as simple as a team of lousy-thoughtless-bozos coming together; moving into a dark cave and writing random software after they have lost all touch with reality.

Put simply; thought-less optimism is a slow process that happens over time; and by the time it takes it's toll on your organization; your organization; in all probabilities; has already lost the sight of the stupidity that surrounds it.

While it is easy to conclude that everyone working at Fly-Clear was a bozo indulging in thoughtless optimism; my guess; is that like any other typical startup out there Fly-Clear had its bunch of builders, story-tellers and whiners.

Now; if you assume that Fly-Clear was a decent startup like any others with an idea and an implementation --- it makes you wonder what got them from the great-fun-filled-start-up days to a miserable shutdown.

Multiple possibilities exist.

Maybe the leadership at Fly-Clear was too arrogant to consider the idea of surrendering; giving-up and starting something else.

Maybe they started off with smart and talented employees who lacked the spine to come out and announce that the king was in fact, naked.

Maybe the young and smart employees in the corridors of Fly-Clear spoke their mind but then decided to hibernate while the folks higher up in the pecking order could not care less.

Maybe just one senior vice-president high up in the pecking order at Fly-Clear believed that he could still get TSA to agree at skipping the security checks and then all those background checks they did would suddenly become appropriate.

Sometimes you need a team of monkeys to turn a project into a failure or shut-down an organization; sometimes; just one monkey left un-sedated is enough to bring an organization to a shut-down.

Maybe it was just mitigated speech and complete in-ability to accept; that the whole idea of continuing background checks; even after TSA refusing to skip the security check; was; as a matter of fact; fu@#ked up that brought them where they are today.

Maybe; and here is the creepy part; maybe it was all of the above in small dozes which were barely noticeable.

While it is easy to read stories of failure and discard them as --- Oh-they-were-stupid-we-are-not --- why these stories of failure with very little forensic evidence to base your analysis on; are still useful --- is because they show the level of fu@#kup-ups some decently intelligent teams; sometimes even having a few really smart people; are capable of orchestrating.

Remember; the problems that eventually cause your project or your organization to fail are much more subtle than we think.

Every time you read a story of failure; take a deep hard look at your organization; your team and your project.

Random acts of stupidity might be happening; really slowly; around you; right now as you read this.

Being consciously aware of the fact and knowing that a fu@#kup as big as some of these glamorous fu@#kups could be cooking right in the corridors of your organization is your only chance at avoiding these fu@#kups.

When you are on the look-out for stupidity in your very own project, team or organization; keep your eyes open dear reader; because total random stupidity is not usually very loud and clear.

It all begins with one isolated act; and then it grows from there --- usually in small doses and unannounced till it becomes big enough to cause your entire organization to go-down; without any prior warning.

Next time you look around you and see what is going on in your project, team or organization; keep your eyes open; really wide.

I wish you good luck.

@BuildersAtWorkBookNotice

Years ago at Multiplitaxion Inc, I witnessed a project which was a collection of multiple source frameworks out there; that were somehow held together with band-aids. When the final product evolved by the virtue of hooking up random open source frameworks; we called it our 'Intellectual Property'.

Soon the band-aid wore off and our product crumbled to pieces before moving to a stable production environment.

Any engineer with an eye and taste for genuine software would clearly seen the different components oddly stitched together by interns fresh out of college and laughed at the idea of calling it our Intellectual Property.

Here is the tragic truth however; we were neither able to sense the oddness in the whole design nor question how you can create intellectual property by hooking up five open source components out there together with weak a band-aid. Anyone who was intelligent enough to understand the oddness of the design decided to keep their gob-shut and tactfully disassociated themselves with the project. 

After multiple man-months of efforts; a huge team slogging away trying to contain and control components which were like beasts running in different direction; started facing and ignoring small broken windows which soon snowballed into an explosion that destroyed the project.

The stitch-and-go approach to intellectual property destroyed the project.

Years later; at work; in my current organization; I was asked to build a system which would allow us to build applications for our clients who had a lot of long-running workflows and wanted to take these workflows online. That is when Crux was born.

Even today; I am viewed with paranoid eyes of capable programmers when I tell them that Crux includes a custom-made application framework along with a light-weight, open source workflow engine that I wrote using new language features of C#.

'But Pops, why didn't you just use windows workflow foundation' --- is one of the most common question that comes up during training session for Crux.

A part of me; which is a pragmatic programmer answers this question with logic and reason --- we have used Windows Workflow Foundation for months; found it to be a decently good workflow engine but it is way too complicated for the kind of long running workflow requirements most of our clients were are going to have. Besides the learning curve associated with it is steep and the benefits gained out of using it for what we were trying to do; aren't high enough.

The real answer however is deeper than that. The real reason for not using Windows-Workflow-Foundation in Crux was the fact; that Windows-Workflow-Foundation in it's current version needs 'stitches' and 'compromises' all over the place to be hooked on to anything.

Put simply; Windows Workflow Foundation; in it's current version; is a beast in itself which requires feeding or caring and that feeding or caring; dear reader; was too much of a price to pay for the simple web based long running workflow systems we were trying to build.

This post dear reader; is not about me trying to illustrate how a product that tried to hook on multiple components out there failed and how me deciding to not use Windows-Workflow-Foundation in Crux ultimately gave us multiple successful client implementations.

This post; dear reader; on the other hand addresses an aspect of software development that is much larger than the two examples I talked about.

Talk to most CTOs, Vice Presidents and even consultants around the world and it is not un-common to come across words like 'leverage and re-use of components out there'. Talk about building something which sounds a little off-track; in-house and it is not un-common to hear the sound of fifty thousand heads of programmers exploding all at once.

While I am all for the idea that we as developers are code addicts who are constantly wanting to bull-doze what exist and start from scratch; it is also important to realize and stop; particularly when your desire to 'leverage' the components starts taking you down the slippery slope of creating Software that can be best described as Frankenstein's monster. A monster that will eventually chase it's developer and make his life miserable.

As a general rule; if you are trying to roll out something that is going to be your core-intellectual-property you are better off building the stuff yourself; or at-least working at a level of abstraction where you can control and tweak every minor detail; rather than trying to hook up multiple ready made components out there in to get something out quick and dirty.

The Stitch And Use approach to building intellectual property is highly overrated.

On the other hand if you are just trying to get a processes automated or get a solution implemented that does not involve your core intellectual property you might be better off buying the stuff that's already out there. When it comes to tools; which allow you sufficient level of abstraction that you need; again; you are better of buying than building.

Either way; always remember - if buying is an option; building is an option too --- even if your Vice President looks at you like you just dropped a filthy rat on his table when you utter the words 'build'.

The next time you are faced with the question of building vs buying or using something already available; keep your biases aside and take a pragmatic decision based on your past experience; logic and your very own gut-feeling.

I wish you good luck.

As I continue to struggle mulishly towards writing the book I started to set out months ago I am starting to realize that there is a lot more to be read; researched and said on the topic of how genuine builders and storytellers function. The 'Random Thoughts On Builders At Work' series of posts is supposed to help me organize of some my random thoughts for inclusion in the book without feeling the urgent need to organize them sequentially.

All of these posts; will be eventually added to the book; but for now; dear reader; you can read them as isolated blog posts without any direct sequential connection with the post that came before it or the one that will follow.

So; dear reader; here is one such random thought of genuine builders.

Why We Build Stuff Decides How Long We Continue Doing It.

Early on; in my post on consistency; I announced that consistency is one quality present in all genuine builders and storytellers. Having said that I continue to be disappointed by the lack of overall consistency in the world of software development in general.

You don't have to take my word for it; dear reader. Go look for:

1. The number of abandoned blogs on word-press or blog-spot that never crossed the post count of ten.
2. The number of abandoned open source projects on source-forge.
3. The number of software programmers who upload and update their resume on a job portal every year.
4. Number of startups that come to an end each year.
5. Number of ideas on which work is started and then abandoned each year.

Somewhere deep down inside;  the question that really kept bothering me was this --- Does this mean that we are all quitters and whiners who start things which we neither want to finish nor support; in the long run.

After a decent bit of soul searching; reading; and one flash of lightning later; I figured out that the answer to these questions; dear reader; really lies in 'why we indulge in the act of building stuff'.

As it turns out; most people; indulge in the all of the acts mentioned above; starting from launching their blog to signing up for an open source project; for the same reasons that crack dealers indulge in the risky business of selling crack.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner explain the phenomenon in their book; Freakonomics. They explain:

Analyze the life cycle of a typical young and budding blogger bubbling with enthusiasm about to sign up for a free word-press or blog-spot account and you will realize the similarities. You will also realize this is why a huge number of bloggers never cross the three post count. Here is pretty much how the life of a typical blog works:

1. Bubbling with enthusiasm and encouragement Fred starts a blog; which he believes will make him rich, famous and so-very-sensational.
2. Fred does three posts in a month; only to discover that no-one cares about him, his blog or his product.
3. Fred silently and subconsciously decides that the world doesn't deserve his blog and quits; till he finds something else which seems amusing and exciting.

If this describes your mental process as you sign up for a blog; do your first open source check-in or share your idea with your friend; it just means that you may have striking similarities with the Wisconsin farm girl who moves to Hollywood or the drug paddler who risks his life at only $3.30 an hour.

The problem with that sort of motivation; is that; it doesn't last very long. Once you realize that getting to the top is painstakingly hard and there is nothing much to be obtained by staying at the bottom or in the middle; you are left with no other option but to quit.

Conan O'Brien describes how he avoids this risk very articulately in his interview with the A.V. Club. He explains:

Whether it is your blog; your open source project or your next big idea; if you have the slightest element of Hollywood-Baby-Dream about the fame and money that is going to come out of all your efforts; chances are that your efforts are going to have take a nose-dive on the path of failure and you are going to quit; whatever-it-is-that-you-are-starting; in the next few days.

On the other hand; if you realize up-front that your blog, open source project or your ideas are not going to make you rich or famous; and decide to do is anyways; for the pleasure of doing it; chances are that you will find it that much more easier to survive as a low maintenance software terror cell and continue doing what you love doing; for a very long time --- consistently.

Remember; why you start something often governs how long you continue doing it.

So before you start; answer the why; very carefully.

Remove the Hollywood element of success out of your idea; right upfront; before you even start.

Stop fooling yourself.

Ask yourself if you will genuinely; truly still love the idea after the money, fame or other Hollywood-Dreams contained in the idea are shattered and removed.

If the answer is 'no' --- drop the distraction and go find something that you genuinely love doing.

If the answer is 'yes' --- start slogging on your idea now.

Either ways; I wish you good luck.

@BuildersAtWorkBookNotice

Honest confession: I love twitter.

Having said that; twitter is by far the loudest when it comes to flaunting your so-called-social-networking-mussel-power on the web. Placed smack in the middle of every user's home page is what I like to call the 'Twitter Power' Dashboard.

As humble and low profile as this dashboard looks; it is one of the features that drives countless users to twitter and keeps them motivated for months as they work hard to 'collect' what twitter calls their 'followers'.

Put simply; the concept of 'followers' and the idea of flaunting the number of followers that follow you on your twitter-home-page is by far one of the biggest psychological gimmicks that I have witnessed in my entire online life till date; and guess what --- it works really well for twitter.

The reasons why it works are pretty obvious.

Joshua Porter in his blog-post on the topic; describes rather articulately why Twitter strikes a note with a huge audience and how it en-cashes on simple fundamental human nature; big time. He explains:

What is actually scary about a feature of this sort is that even someone like Joshua; who is smart enough to understand the whole point cannot help but use the meta-data on every user that twitter flaunts on their twitter-home-page to come to his conclusions about the person. He explains:

While the analysis seems reasonable enough at the first glance; the fundamental issue here is realizing why twitter decided to throw the Twitter-Power dashboard on your face in the first place.

It was a design decision.

One that benefits Twitter tremendously.

The real question; that you; dear reader; need to ask yourself now is this --- how does it benefit you?

Does it nudge you to go out there and push meaningful content or does it nudge you to increase your follower-count by indulging in the You-Follow-Me-I-Follow-You funny dance that a huge percentage of twitter users dance?

As anyone who has run a blog for more than a year and has had more than a handful of subscribers will tell you; constantly peeking at your traffic and writing with the sole purpose of increasing it; is highly overrated.

Jeff Atwood describes this much more articulately than me:

With it's one-forty-one character limit; twitter makes writing something you would yourself like to read later really hard; With it's constant display of your statistics or traffic-meta-data; it makes worrying about the number of followers you have really easy.

If you; dear reader are on twitter; the real challenge is not how to increase your follower count.

The real challenge; dear reader; is in-fact; to turn a blind eye to your 'twitter-power' dashboard and focus on adding content that your readers and you yourself will love reading.

Now; go visit your twitter home page.

This time; try not to look at your follower count.

Focus on your past tweets section instead.

See if you can read through your very own twitter home page; read it; not get bored and get some genuine value out of it.

If you can't --- the number of followers you have; is just meta-data that doesn't mean a thing.

The whole idea of measuring 'Twitter Power' through number of followers is highly overrated.

Now go find meaningful ways to participate and contribute using that small one-forty-one-character text-box.

I wish you good luck.

Let Your Corridors Carry Your Stories.

During the early days of my career as a programmer; I was hired at Multiplitaxion Inc; where; besides doing my job as a programmer; I was given random chores that other 'respectable-programmers' of the organization found too insulting to take up. The chores ranged from formatting documents; cleaning up HTML; uploading build files on production servers; to ordering food for programmers who were going to work late and fixing lose network cables for people.

Chores that laid the foundation for; and helped me understand the importance of becoming a one man army.

Time moved forward; one day at a time and I found myself working on these chores besides honing my programming skills.

Then one fine morning; years later; I found myself leading a team.

This was soon followed by leading multiple teams.

It was on another fine morning; that I was told that I someone who was very 'senior' and then a quite few people at work started listening to me.

Years later; every time I discussed those early painful times; what I learnt from those times and how those times changed Multiplitaxion Inc; forever; with young and bugging engineers; I started getting funny glances from senior-programmers and managers alike.

Some mildly hinted that the young-and-budding-developers working in teams that report to me might start respecting me lesser if they came to know of my humble starting; stupid failures and the deep scars I had received early on in my career.

Others felt it might have an impact on the overall organizational image.

'Why share stories of your or your organization's humble past with someone who is reporting to you?' --- some wondered.

Rosa Say describes the idea of sharing your own and your organization's past through stories much more articulately than I will be able to describe it. She explains:

Stories from your organizations past and sometimes your professional past can be humbling and painful. When you lead a team and find a few people listening to you; it's easy to put yourself in an ivory tower; shit-can; hide and never talk about all those humbling experiences from the past that taught you so much or made your organization or your team what it is today.

Not sharing these stories; is safe.

Not sharing these stories ensures that everyone in your team continues to respect you and your organization.

Not sharing these stories allows you to continue depicting yourself as this super-successful-guy-who-never-gets-anything-wrong and your organization as the-place-that-was-always-perfect.

This approach; dear reader; has just one problem however --- it is your first step to becoming a genuine prick who is always busy protecting his and his organization's so-called-always-successful-image.

Accept it or not; every organization has stories --- stories of success; stories of pathetic failures; stories of things done right; stories of things done wrong; stories of victories; stories of failures; stories of shipping crap; stories of not shipping crap and sometimes even stories of colossal fu@#kups or total disasters.

How many of these stories make it to the corridors of your organization and flow through them; letting your builders; learn from your organization's past?

Accept it or not; every manager has stories from his professional life --- stories of doing a few things right; stories of doing a few things wrong; stories of heroism; stories of pathetic failures and even stories of colossal fu@#kups orchestrated by his very own self.  

Look around you.

How many of these stories about your organization, your team or your managers are you aware of?

If you answered 'none' you might be working with a bunch of pricks trying to protect their 'so-called-successful-image'  by shit-caning their failures.

Remember; management is all about no secrets and an environment where stories don't flow through the corridors; cannot be a fun filled environment for genuine builders.  

Which stories about your organization and your managers are you aware of?

Do these stories give you a clear picture of your organization's and manager's professional past?

Do these stories tell you about organizations culture chart?

How many stories of your own professional successes and fu@#kups that happened in the past; are you comfortable telling people who work with you?

What's your story; dear reader?

Discuss.

@BuildersAtWorkBookNotice

Honest confession: I am not exactly a rock star when it comes to spelling.

To be honest; I suck at spellings and I make random typos all the time.

The very idea of writing a post without a decent spell-checker makes me cringe.

Why?

Because I hate typos; specially when I am the one who is making them.

Spell-checker for me are a profoundly important.

I consider spell-checkers to be an invaluable tool for both amateur and veteran writers.

Having said that; anyone who writes; knows that spell-checkers are far from perfect. Which is probably why; every post I write; goes through more than one round of editing followed by a huge deal of proof reading. Typically; the branding; formatting; editing and proof reading of each post on this blog takes as much time as the process of writing the post itself takes.

While all veteran bloggers will tell you that spell-checking and proof reading everything you post; meticulously; is hugely important; after a point of time in your life when ideas start torturing you till you set them on a concrete post you begin to wonder just how much effort should you be putting into proof reading of each post when the same time could have been used writing about new ideas that will not let you go till you turn them into a fresh posts.

Long story short; publishing a post is pretty similar to shipping software. You have to walk the fine line between quality and shipping. Of-course your posts are shitty; but if they sit on your hard-disk gathering dust waiting to become perfect 'one day' they are worse than shitty.

Penelope Trunk describes this much more articulately than me in her post on typos while writing blog posts. She explains:

Penelope's argument against spending time on spell-checks and countless rounds of proof reading stands around five simple pillars:

1. Spellchecker isn't perfect.
2. Spelling has nothing to do with intelligence.
3. You don't have unlimited time, so spend it on ideas, not hyphens.
4. Perfectionism is a disease.
5. Use the comments section for what matters: Intelligent discourse (not parsing grammar).

If you are someone who posts using a WYSIWYG editor and doesn't even bother finding a decent blog writing tool; the discussion on Penelope's post or this post is clearly not for you.

On the other hand if you are someone who spends a huge deal of time worrying about typos on his blog posts and does multiple rounds of proof reading followed by editing; I would highly recommend Penelope's Post on this topic.

It is worth a read.

Shipping regularly; whether it is in your project, code or blog-posts; is a rewarding and fun filled exercise.

Much more rewarding than constantly worrying about perfection and playing it safe by writing less and writing perfect.

Remember; 'Don't-Worry. Be-Crappy'.

Put a decent bit of effort behind editing, proof reading and spell-checks; but don't be obsessed with these.

After all; your participation and contribution is much more important.

Besides; once you have shipped; you can always Rinse and Repeat.

If you have posts sitting on your hard-disk gathering dust because you are going to 'make-them-better', proof reader them, or spell-check them 'someday'; may I suggest; dear reader; that you ask yourself if they represent an idea worth sharing; and if the answer is yes; consider posting them out.

Not doing so can make your blog safe-and-boring.

Then continue to fix your posts as you move forward.

I do it all the time; and if people complain about their RSS Readers showing an old post as un-read when I fix it later it's easy to blame it all on Pops.

On a side note dear reader; if you find a typo on this post or anywhere on this blog; please do continue leave me a generous comment or email just like some of you have done in the past. I assure you; that the typos will be fixed and you will be thanked sincerely.

After-all; I hate typos; as much as you do.

Honest.