Gods care through the Band Tune Book

We break for something different. This is not my normal IT/agile/lean post. It's about God and his care for me

Happy that you continued to read.

I've been having some hard days at work. I was very angry and it affected not only me but also those around me. Also I was being affected physically with dizziness and head ache. For the first time in my life I found it better to go home and cool off a couple of days.

I felt so tired and was beginning to doubt if I'm really doing the right thing. In the right place.

So I did things that pick me up. Playing hymns on my euphonium is one of those things. My playing is closely related to my faith, since I've made most religious experiences with my instrument in hand, playing in the most cases.

What happened this time was Gods way of saying: I got you, man. Keep going. I've got you.

The "Don't fear audits and the news"-business methodology - with certification

If you lie you have to have great memory

Goldfish by josullivan.59
used under Creative Commons

That's a saying I've heard in a number of place. I have a terrible memory. Ah, it's great and everything, but it's sadly short. So I don't lie. I'm to stupid I have to short memory for that.

That's such a relief! I know that going in. In everything I do. I don't lie. I play it open. There - now you know too.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it makes me better. Because since I'm playing it open it puts the pressure on me to be great and make sure that my work can take to be scrutinised and reviewed by everyone that I share it with.
It's not scary - because that is how it is from the start.

The humble blogger approach - some practical tips

I hate fights.
And arguments.
Hey, even discussions sometimes I find uncomfortable or at least boring.

Note that I try not to be a coward. I stand up for my beliefs and thoughts. But I don't like to fight about them, that seems very common today. If you wanna pick a fight, just tweet any opinion under the #NoEstimates tag and you see what I don't wanna.

From XKCD

From time to time I've withdrawn from blogging and social media. Just to get away. That might be cowardly, but I didn't see the use continuing fighting about how to approach estimation, what JavaScript data access library is better etc. The world need you and me better elsewhere.

I've stopped being the guy at the computer in the cartoon to the right. But I'm still expressing my views.

In this blog post I'll share how.
I've found a way to express my views without being a coward and in a way that will not, as easy, create arguments and fighting but rather discussions and learning. And peace in my soul.

Embrace uncertainty - the family version

The one talk that made the most impact of me have to be "Embrace Uncertainty" by Dan North. If you haven't seen it... You're dead to me Please view it now!

Dan North - Embracing Uncertainty from NDC Conferences on Vimeo.

The thing that stuck the most for me in there was the short, and depressing, sentence:

We are rather wrong than uncertain. 

Meaning simply that we would rather run with something that we know for a fact to be wrong than to live with uncertainty. We are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. But for those that can embrace it there's other type of control and "certainty" to be had.

Now... I'm beginning to think that this comes to us from an early age. I've done studies... the last one was this Saturday at the mall, with Albert (6).

Here's the conversation we had at McDonalds:

Albert; When is mum back?
Me: I don't know.
Albert: But I want to know when!
Me: After she's done shopping.
Albert: When is that?
Me: Told you - I don't know.
Albert: But when?
Me: In 9 minutes.
Albert: Ah. Thanks. ... That's like 2 hours right?
[She came back after 24 minutes]

I didn't have any contact with her and hence couldn't know when she would come back. Neither could she since she was looking for a specific thing. She didn't know if the store carried the item.

Albert was rather wrong (or rather fed the wrong information) than being uncertain. In a situation where the only fact was that we could not know when she came back.

Note also that 9 minutes was totally made up. And that Albert didn't have any concept of 9 minutes. It's not now. That's the only thing he cared about.

This is of course contrived. Or not. Because this conversation reminds me of many conversations I've been in, where "I don't know" simply was not accepted. This has not only to do with estimates (which I think sometimes can be useful), but let me share a conversation I've had with a high-ranking project manager at one of Swedens biggest insurance companies:

PL: So how long will it take you to finish this service?
Me: I haven't got an idea. We don't even know what it supposed to do yet. Kinda make estimating harder.
PL: But come on, give a ball park estimate.
Me: 100000 hours!
PL: Seriously! That's way to much!
Me: 4 hours
PL: Really... you don't want to do this? That's way to low?
Me: No you wrong. I want to do this - I cannot however. I know too little about the problem.

[30 seconds of silence as we were pondering our situation]
PL: So what do you think then?
Me: 458 hours.
PL: Yeah, that sounds reasonable.

And yes, the 458 was in the Gannt Chart later. And we got beaten up for missing the deadline.

Neither Albert nor the project manager (tm) could handle the uncertainty. Or could even try to look for other questions to ask that would have given them other kinds of control.
Could I?
If I cannot have the certainty you are looking for, am I willing to accept other kinds?

Vision statements - why not say what you REALLY mean?

I'm working with vision statements and strategic planning right now. Man - this an area that is really misunderstood and misused I think. Also, and that's what this post is about, I think it's deliberately this way in order to get some wiggle room. I don't understand that. We'll get there.

Definitions

As always I've learned a great deal while diving into this area again and here are the definitions that we are using and that I think is clarifying:

• Mission statement - Why are we here? What is our purpose? For example; Why do the Salvation Army exists in Indonesia? 
• Vision - when we are doing the mission perfectly - what would that look like? This is a dream, a target and something to aspire to. 
• Strategic plan - how will we get from where we are today to the vision? 
• Business plan - what kind of actions and resources will our strategic plan require from us? When or in which order are we planning to do the actions? 

What is this good for?

Guidance. If you read this blog you know that I'm not specifically into detail planning. I don't think it's feasible. For one simple reason; the future is unknown. It's really the only thing that we know about it - it will not be exactly how we planned it. 

However - the list above is very handy anyway I think. Most of the points are not about planning but guidance, alignment and policies for how we act. In that regard this is greatly valuable. 

Hey, it's one of those days, I even think that the last point (that is planning) could be useable. This too will show us where we planning to go. From where we are now. With what we know. 

As long as we understand that these things will change, there's no problem. 

There's a problem here

However... I found that many organisations are VERY reluctant to change these lists. To be quite frank the first point (the mission) maybe shouldn't change. That would mean to change the whole reason for the organisations existence. That is basically destroying the organisation and rebuilding it into something completely different. 

But the vision... might change. If we need to do some drastic adaptations to a new reality for example. Just imagine how the Internet has changed business models. The vision for companies like N.Y. Times and CNN I imagine shifted radically with the new possibilities in a new media.  

From Kanban in Action

Strategic plans is very interesting, I think, and here we should be prepared to change much more than the previous ... levels. This has to do with a very important part that I've wrote in italics above: "where we are today". 

This is also one of the really powerful tenants of kanban: "start where you are - change in small steps". 

The Commissioner of the Salvation Army (CEO in business terms) in Indonesia told me an old English joke that is suitable here:

A man drove up to a woman on the sidewalk, in London, and asked: 

"How do I get to Piccadilly circus from here?" 

The woman responded:

"Oh... that's hard. I wouldn't start from here" 

This is funny (or well...) because it shows that we often don't take the reality into our plans. You know what - it's out there. There's no use lying to ourselves and plan from a place where we not are now. This is how it looks, this are our financial state, these are our customers etc. Now - let's improve towards the wonderful state our vision talked about.

The last part, business plans, is just an example, suggestion in my mind. Here one could benefit greatly from the thinking behind rolling wave planning; for things that is close in the future (next week) we have more details planned, for things that further in the future we leave details out.

Remember that you hold the dial for how much details you put in there. And hence your disappointments... 

You were speaking about a problem?

Oh, forgot about that... Well the problem I have seen a lot is that people and organisations in them are very reluctant to change. About anything. Especially vision statements. 

So we write very lofty statements, with big fluffy words like "holistic", "empower", "best within selected areas", "leading" and "famous".
Often when I don't understand or if I question if what we do really fits into the vision the answer is (had this experience with many clients):

Well, you could say that holistic means... 

Best really means that we are ...

The intention of leading was more like ...

This is playing the victim blame game a bit. If it was your intention - why not write that then? How am I supposed to understand what you mean when your vision said something that was so lofty that I didn't get it the first time around?

Either it was a mistake or, you didn't want to be clear and crisp on purpose. Most organisations spend a lot of money and time doing these statements, so the it's probably not lack of competence. So why are we unclear on purpose?

The answer that comes back again and again to me is; because it's hard to change those. In some organisations the vision statement is written into the constitution. I'm in one right now. Updating the vision means that we need to reregister legal documents etc. etc.

So what? To me it's much better to be clear and understandable with the vision that to avoid work. The vision is intended to guide us and show us what to do. Please make those directions clear.

Summary

Good indicators and guides are hard to write. It's hard to get it right. But once created can prove invaluable to help and guide people in your organisation. 

What is your approach to the problem that they are hard to write? 

Do you think really, really hard and then carve it in stone write it once so that you never never have to change this again? 

Or do you change your process here so that you think hard for a short while and then make it easier to change and communicate - so that you have a living dialog about your vision and strategy. 

You choose. 

Ugly clothing, symbols and values

Here in Indonesia most companies and organisations have some kind of uniform or at least very strict dress code. For example where I work, the Salvation Army, we have Salvation Army uniform on Mondays and Tuesdays, a set batik shirt on Wedenesdays, "pick your own batik" on Thursdays and training clothes on Fridays.

Here's a collage for you to feast your eyes on be scared by, showing some of those shirts:

I must say... most of these shirts I've found really silly and ugly. The don't sit right on me. I feel awkward.

Coaching exercise - building Lego

From Amazon

I've just concluded a vacation during which I had time to build a lot of Lego (tm) with my sons. That's really a lot of fun and very developing for the kids I notice. With my oldest, Albert, we have much fun following description and building the house to the left.
My other sons more like to build something that just comes up with the pieces they have in hand.

After sitting with Albert a couple of hours I started to recognise the personality the Lego building brought forth in me; this was coaching-Marcus talking.

I think this is a really good exercise and in this short post I'll show you a couple things that I noticed and that was very eye-opening for me.

Move the information to the authority, and not the other way around

There’s no secret that I like the writings (and presentations) of Captain David Marquet.  If you haven’t seen this video do that instead of reading this. It change a whole lot about how I look at leadership.
One of the best tips in the book is the small imperative sentence:

Move the authority to the information!

However, often when I explain this to people and clients I often end up adding the opposite to this sentence. From that I got some interesting conversations going.
Let’s see if I can explain what I mean here.

You control the disappointment dial - use it!

Walking my oldest son, Albert, to and from school is one of the highlights of the days here in Indonesia. At least when he’s in a good mood. Today was not one of those days. He was angry because something didn’t turn out as he planned. He very often does that: makes up his mind about what we should do (often involving TV or games) and then gets very upset when it doesn’t happen the way he wanted.
I tried to talk with him about that and in doing so I had a little epiphany about me, the IT industry, estimates and uncertainty.
Oh, I should probably add that I re-watched this great presentation by Dan North two days before. It probably affected me, to maybe be wiser than I otherwise would.

What I missed, longed for, happy to not have from fasting from social media

Tomorrow I will end a 30 day social media fast.

I got a bit overwhelmed and depressed by some comments and discussions that I was drawn into and aired it with my buddies at Aptitud. 2 minutes later 3 of us decided to go on a fast.

I uninstalled all my social media apps and removed the shortcuts to the sites. The first thing was to make it
harder to use it. I was in real deep, and even felt a bit stressed that if I didn't read my stream the first thing in the morning.  The first couple of days it was pretty close that I got back in a couple of times. I realized that if I was waiting for a slow page (ALL pages when in Indonesia) I often switched over to Twitter to catch up.... And got stuck.

Full disclosure: I have been tweeting pictures from the @kanbanInAction account just to promote the book. And yesterday I was on facebook for my work, gathering examples of social media in the Salvation Army.

After about 5 days I forgot all about it and since then it just been a joy. I read a fictional book for the first time in several years. This has not only to do with not being on social media, but it gave some space and room.

In this post I will just list the things I have missed, not missed and the reasons for me taking it up again...

Aligning our sights - what Indonesians taught me, part I

I have now been in Indonesia for about 4 months. There's so many new impressions and things that I've seen, learned and experienced that I'm starting to forget them. Some is bad, some is good, some are ugly so I thought that I would write them down.
The first thing is some sort of alignment that is repeated almost everyday. In almost all workplaces that I've seen or heard about. Like a routine checkup on what is important here. I've actually experienced that before, in a very different setting.

In this post I'm planning to tell you a couple of short stories and episodes, to then try to see what this could look like in my "normal", more western culture. I hope it will be interesting and useful.

For the Indonesian War Cry: Achieve more by doing less

DISCLAIMER for frequent readers of this blog:
I now work for the Salvation Army in Indonesia and they asked me to write an article from time to time in the Indonesian War Cry (the Salvation Army magazine). I of course used my normal style of writing and wrote about the thing I've written about here. Oh, not Javascript or Nancy maybe but Limit WIP, Lean and Kanban. But with a Christian twist and message.

So if you don't want to read this, please stop now. I'll soon come back to my normal things. But if you want to please continue. Maybe there's something that you can use in here. Or not. As normal on this blog, I use it to store my ideas and thoughts.
END DISCLAIMER

Here is the second of two short articles that I've written for the Indonesian War Cry. You can read the first here. This article is about Achieving more by doing less. I hope you like it.

For the Indonesian War Cry: On Motivation

DISCLAIMER for frequent readers of this blog:
I now work for the Salvation Army in Indonesia and they asked me to write an article from time to time in the Indonesian War Cry (the Salvation Army magazine). I of course used my normal style of writing and wrote about the thing I've written about here. Oh, not Javascript or Nancy maybe but Limit WIP, Lean and Kanban. But with a Christian twist and message.

So if you don't want to read this, please stop now. I'll soon come back to my normal things. But if you want to please continue. Maybe there's something that you can use in here. Or not. As normal on this blog, I use it to store my ideas and thoughts.
END DISCLAIMER

Here is the first of two short articles that I've written for the Indonesian War Cry. I hope you like it.

Share your internet connection via WiFi on Windows 8.1

For the first time in years, I'm using a Windows PC as my main computer. It's Windows 8.1 and thanks to a great introduction video the transition was quite nice. Of course there are things that I miss and keep doing wrong (right-click... had forgot all about that one), but overall I'm happy.

The first main thing that I ran into was when I was planning on sharing my internet connection so that my phone could use it. Nothing strange really. I do that several times a day on my MacBook Pro. And it's dead-simple too. Click the Network-symbol and go "Create network...", give it a name (and optional password) and you're done.

What do you want to give customers; bad or good news?

We've just got our visas for entering Indonesia! Lovely!

But the process has been very long, trying and almost took the best out of us. It got me thinking about a big, and characterising difference between the agile and the non-agile approach (let's call i waterfall for now, shall we?).

The process we went through for our visa application resembles the way many companies deliver software, sadly. Could there be another way?

When we applied for the Visas we were told that it should take about 2 months to get them. We acted accordingly and started to quit jobs, take kids out of school, end the lease for our apartment and a lot of other things - just to match that prediction.

Some experience with uncertainty

I'm a big proponent of trying to live with and take embrace of uncertainty when you can. I've been saying "It's just how things are - try to cope with it instead of fighting it". Inspired by Dan North and his excellent talk: Embracing Uncertainty.

But lately I've been on the other side... where I was craving more certainty. As often before I found myself screaming for things that's been asked of me before. "Give me a status! Give me a plan!" I heard myself begging.

I realized two things: it's hard living with uncertainty and the smallest status (however uncertain) is better than no certainty at all.

CodeBetter - a new home for part of me

I started this blog about 8 years ago. It now contains 830-ish posts (this 831 I think). I have also just passed 20000 tweets:

With my 20000 tweets I wanted to say a big "Thank you" to all you tweeps that I've learned from so much. And a shout-out to @MikaelOstberg
— Marcus Hammarberg (@marcusoftnet) August 8, 2013

During this time I have not drawn to much attention to myself, in my opinion, and by no means have become famous or well-known.

But some truly awesome things has happened during the last years that it directly related to the fact that I've been exposing my ideas, thoughts and failures on the net. Most of the things that I have learned during the last years as also come from me interacting with different awesome thinkers - not seldom ONLY online (twitter and through the blog).

Moving to Indonesia

Well the title really says it all, but there's big changes coming for me and my family this autumn. We're moving to Bandung, Indonesia to work at a hospital for the Salvation Army there.
That statement may cause some questions to arise in your head. Let me see if I can foresee them?

AppHarbor, Nancy and the Could not load file or assembly 'Nancy.ViewEngines.Razor.BuildProviders' error

I've built a small application. Just something I threw together with a friend during a hack-session at the client. (It's a dot voting application and you can try it here, if it's up :))

As we wanted something out there fast we built it with NancyFx and MongoDB (a first for me) and we host it on AppHarbor with continuous delivery via GitHub. Since all of these (saved Mongo) has served me well in the past I was very surprised when we ran into problem.

Suggested visualization for the SÖS Children Emergency

I have small children (5, 3 and 3 years old). During the winter half of the year that means that they are sick. A lot. No really: like you wouldn't believe. Ok... like this: last year we had a cold outbreak in october and the next time all three of them was well again was in august.
This means that I have from time to time spent some time at the hospital. No - you cannot go during the day since the kids mostly becomes much worse when they have lied down for a couple of hours. Like after sleeping for about 3 hours for example.
The people working at SÖS children emergency room is amazing! I very rarely met people that isn't cooperative and want to do their best, even 0430 in the night. Thanks a bunch for taking care of me and my kids when we have been in dire straits.

However ... I miss some visualizations on my waiting progress. Last time I was there I started to think and I came up with something really, really simple that could help me as a patient a lot. Who knows - the nurses and doctors might find it useful too.

In this blog post I wanted to share my thoughts, from a pure client perspective. I known nothing about the inner workings and process at the ER, other than having been there about 15 times the last 2 years.