Behind the Scenes at Global-Roam

(Excuse the sad pun)

This week we went out for lunch with one of the guys in the office who was celebrating his birthday.  One of the small things we do in the company to celebrate the uniqueness of every individual (that’s a tick – thanks for suggesting it those years ago, Ricky).

Anyhow, as we were waiting for our meals to arrive in the local steakhouse and conversation drifted to some of the more detailed technical nature of software development, my mind began to wander (yeah, that’s a cross) and I pulled out the latest copy of INC, which had just arrived in the mail and started to browse (yeah, another cross)!

An article in the magazine caught my attention, as it provided a few pointers about the workplace culture that we are working to cultivate internally.

Given that I have been asked a couple of times this week by candidates for our Chief Software Engineer position about our culture (how it is now, and how we want to evolve it, over time), I thought it would be useful posting this (though I know it does not absolve me of the crosses above). read more »

After posting my review of Kent Beck’s webinar back in November, I contacted Kent to confirm it was ok with him to publish.

As part of doing this,  I asked Kent if there were good people in Australia who could provide us assistance in transitioning to Agile.

Hence, Kent pointed us at Steve Hayes of Cogent Consulting, who we have been recently using to provide us some greater understanding of different aspects of Agile (though I read recently that Steve is planning to leave)!

In long-hand, you will be known as our:

General Manager for Discerning, Developing and Delivering what the Customer Wants

That’s a bit of a mouthful, so we have shortened it to a variety of titles used on this blog and elsewhere:
1)  GM Software
2)  Chief Software Engineer
3)  Director of the Product Development “Factory”

I would stress that all three aspects of the role are important.

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As you might have noticed, I have been adopting an iterative (and open) approach to the communication of my Vision for the company, starting with this post, and linked to several others that provide more details.

As this communication has been progressively clarified, I have become more aware of the need to also clearly communicate why our company exists, in the first place (it’s not primarily to make a profit, though of course it’s nice when it does).

Hence, this post has been added – it’s currently the 1st draft, and may be progressively refined (depending on what feedback I receive about how clear it is)

Summary

I had previously posted about the Mission of the company on the same page on which I posted about the Vision for the company.

To allow me to to provide further explanation, I have shifted this to a separate post:

WHY?     The purpose of our business is to help the broadest range of people make the most of the opportunities that the electricity market offers them.

HOW?      We do this by helping people understand the electricity market (so they can see the opportunities for themselves).

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A central part of the changes we’re making internally, stemming from the Autopsy 2 process, is that we’re aiming to get very clear about “why?”

Why does our company exist in the first place?

Why should our customers care about what we’re striving to be?

Why would anyone be led by me?

Shirlaws call these questions “context”. read more »

The self-made man and his rags-to-riches struggle is often glorified in our society, especially in Australia.  The most endearing is the story of Donald Bradman: his relentless practise with a cricket stump and golf ball leads to one of the most illustrious careers in sporting history.

The Don is a perfect example of an outlier.  His batting average is a freakish 4.4 standard deviations above the mean, a statistical anomaly that hoists his success well above any other sporting hero. Michael Jordan has nothing on Donald Bradman.

The story of The Don is also typical of an outlier.  He emerged from Australian bush leagues to make a lasting mark on international cricket.  His habit of hitting a golf ball against a water tank has become part of Australian lore.  We attribute The Don’s success to the hard work he put in as a youth - he is self-made. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell contends that there is much more to success than a bit of hard yakka.
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Perhaps a year ago, we bought our first copy of this book. One of the guys read it then, and highly recommended that we get a number of copies such that everyone in the office could read (alas no book review online then).

We did this, and a number of others did read the book – giving similarly rave reviews.  Coincidentally, they commenced a software development project (our “UPIP project”) with the “lessons learnt” still fresh in their mind.

However, the wheels fell off – leading to the UPIP project being canned indefinitely.  This was one of the major triggers for me to instigate our Autopsy 1 process, which continued into the Autopsy 2 process, my stipulation that we were going to go Agile, and the commencement of our process for looking for our Chief Software Engineer.

Note that there is plenty more we can learn from the many things that went wrong in the UPIP project – with a view to improving ourselves for the future.  When I find the time, I will post a more detailed retrospective as a restricted post, just about that project.

Don’t get me wrong – I understand that we had significant shortcomings that were the root cause of our calamity.  For instance, it became clear through this process that our team collectively had no major project management experience – hence a read of a single book (no matter how good) was not going to make them competent (especially with respect to a complex project).

However I did wonder how a project to could go significantly off the rails (and in the early stages) so soon after a number of people had read, and raved about, this book. read more »