The current Rands In Repose is the story of The Larry Test which is about done meaning Done and some subtle team heuristics to decide if you have reached the Good Enough state for shipping. I like Michael Lopp’s writing style and the points he raises in his posts; another recommended blog if you have any sort of management / lead aspirations.

Anyhow, the most important bits of this post are not even related to the main narrative.

  • Different managers have different communication styles and there are those where delivery of criticism feels almost pleasant. But criticism, whether it’s constructive or destructive, coming from the guy who signs the checks often triggers the knee-jerk negative “I did something wrong” vibe. – It is not just managers who have to keep this in mind. If you are a leader (officially or unofficially) you need to be aware of this. Also, in situations of greater power distance, greater awareness needs to be had.
  • What your boss has that you do not is, hopefully, more experience. What he should be able to do after looking at a situation you’ve been staring at for a month is say, “Yeah, I’ve seen this before and this is how this is going to play out.” – And hopefully that experience is still relevant to the current situation. If not, you’re screwed.
  • Part of your job is to become your boss. What you are doing while stumbling to and fro is finding and building the experience your boss already has. The trick and the art is, how long did your boss let you stumble? I mean learn. There’s a fine line between managerial insight and incompetence. Your job, and your manager’s, is to let your team wander long enough to find that experience. – Isn’t one of the agile practices to Fail Fast then write a unit test to prevent the failure from ever coming back? Same thing for experiential learning. Fail, then don’t fail that way again. Fail in a new way. Whomever can figure out how to write unit tests for human behavior will make a killing.