The first plank of my take on fixing the trade is MMMSS: If you want more value faster, take Many More Much Smaller Steps. Today I want to start laying this out for folks. This isn't gonna happen in one thread, but let's get started.
Before we dig in a little, let me remind you that I'm aiming here for geek comfort good, respite. I am far more concerned with changing the world right now than I am with changing code. I hope you are, too.

Please keep working for change outside the monitor.

Black Lives Matter.
The first thing to get about MMMSS is that it represents a radical change. It seems like a minor tweak, but it's not, it is a complete reversal of a whole body of existing trade practice, the model I call "Rework Avoidance Theory". To drive it home, maybe a picture will help. A left-to-right picture of a path, showing an initial phase
Look at it. A short period at the beginning of work to establish a walking skeleton -- important when we start from scratch -- followed by an almost *meandering* path from left to right over time.

And MMMSS is telling you, expressly, explicitly, this is the most efficient path.
The reaction I'm wanting: "This is whack." That line isn't straight, so it can't be efficient. Those steps are really small, so they can't be better than big steps. Where's planning and coordination? This is disorderly and quasi-random, not efficient.

Whack. Dude's whack.
It's the nature of the steps that is making the path look this way, their constraints. Each step meets a minimum of three criteria. 1) It must be small enough. 2) It must be shippable on completion. 3) It must not make things worse.

All vague terms, we'll get to that.
So the reason that line isn't aimed straight at the destination is because there was no step at that location that met those three criteria. The choices were too big, or unshippable, or made things worse.
For reference, here's the approach to change that we see most commonly in the trade. This is what Rework Avoidance Theory (RAT) has us all walking around trying to do to be efficient.
Well. I mean. You gotta admit, that's a lot straighter, cleaner, more orderly, organized, coordinated, and frankly better-looking on a slide.

So you can see, we got a helluva case we're gonna have to make to suggest that the first path is more efficient than the second one.
I'm gonna blurt that case out, quick like a bunny, but each of its elements is a whole argument in and of itself, and a whole other thread for later.

There are four elements to the case.
1) Actual change isn't plane geometry. It doesn't happen in Platonic Flatland, but in an incredibly twisty, complicated, loopy, ever-shifting high-dimensional, murky, and curved manifold, one we call "reality".
All arguments abstract details away from reality, including the one we're making, but arguments from plane geometry abstract away not just details but many *critical* and even *dominant* factors affecting change.
2) Directed parallelism -- where a central intelligence plans, monitors, and coordinates multiple streams of activity -- has a sharply rising non-linear cost curve, at even very small numbers of streams.
Parallelism is never free. And directed parallelism's cost isn't linear as the size of the problem goes up. It doesn't just get harder when we add more streams, it gets "harder-er", quickly swamping any benefit it might deliver.
3) Small steps have *intrinsic* value in human enterprises. That is, regardless of the value of a small step to the outside world, it brings powerful value to the internal operation of a system *for* *no* *other* *reason* than that it is a small step.
Steerability, interruptability, grokkability, rhythm, motivation, focus, reversability, and undirected target parallelism, *all* of these are of huge benefit in human enterprise, and they're all part of the intrinsic benefit of small steps.
4) Embracing change, in technique and attitude, is increasinly well understood, and the costs of avoiding change are extremely high. When we assume change, welcome it, build for it -- when we embrace change -- we far out-perform the old rework avoidance theory.
The RAT hates change because it purposefully makes ecologies on the assumption that change won't happen. Fix that technique & attitude, change goes from being the monster under the bed to our most delightful, energizing, and exciting companion, a key to our success in the world.
So. This is a very shallow sketch, but I hope it's a sketch that gets you hooked, because we got miles to go before we sleep.
We got one ugly picture, one pretty picture, and a very striking disagreement about effectiveness in change. We've got vague definitions for step, and vague one-liners of the three criteria for choosing steps. And we've got a case to make, built on four elements.

Phew.
The next stop, sometime this week, will be to get a richer sense of what we mean by step, by size, by shippable, and by non-negative. That oughta fill up a thread.

I hope you'll come along for the ride.
One last thought before we go.

You prolly think this is a conversation about changing code. Or maybe you're a maker of the product variety, and it's about changing product. Or a coach, and it's about changing process or orgs.

You'd be right, and you'd be wrong.
MMMSS isn't about changing *code*, or *product*, or *process*.

It's about *changing*.

Making changes, responding to changes, embracing change in every domain.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and we'll talk more later. :)
Thanks for hanging in. Wanna show me some love?

1) Subscribe. Free, spam-free, full-text/audio.

geepawhill.org/subscribe

2) Keep working for change outside the monitor. Every little bit helps.

Stay safe, stay strong, stay angry, stay kind.

Black Lives Matter.

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More from @GeePawHill

27 Sep
As a person who has been successfully coaching software development teams for twenty years, let me throw out a few ideas to chew over. With luck, maybe one of them will jiggle the frame enough for you to find a next step.
1) Nothing, *absolutely* nothing, always works. There are thousands of forces in play in a typical team or organization, and many of them are inherently or ontogenetically anti-change. I vary my game a *lot*, and I have a lot of variants to offer. And I still lose all the time.
2) My dog Wally likes to lead, when we're out on Tiger Patrol. But he only occasionally knows where we're actually going. He finesses this by frequently checking to make sure that he's leading where we want to go. This is *primo* coaching practice.
Read 15 tweets
25 Sep
Okay, gonna play some ONI Spaced Out. This is the variant where the starting world is still fairly large. Seed V-SNDST-C-68286727-0

Dunno how long I'll go, but what the hell, it's been quite a while. :) The starting biome of a game of Oxygen Not Included.
Plenty of water, and the temperate biome seems reasonably wide. I'm thinking of a central 16-column with two wider wings on either side, ultimate census 24. And away we go!
First stop, the starter bathroom, cuz some things never change. Once that's complete, I'll bounce to the west of it and toss in my generator and get some research going.
Read 14 tweets
24 Sep
Friday afternoon, got some surprisingly spicy but labeled plain hummus, and I chanced to watch an hour of my favorite ONI twitcher, but I'm days behind the current run-through, so now I am *studying* an old ONI twitch stream.

I do not intend to apologize for this.
It's been nearly a year since I played ONI for more than a few minutes. But I think I'm about ready again. Gonna play my first Spaced Out run. Got it started, realized I was gonna need some new inspiration, cuz my old designs aren't good for these tiny planetoids.
Lifegrow's a great watch for me, cuz on the one hand, he has my order/symmetry/cleanliness thing, but on the other hand, he's really good at the game, and on the third hand, he's *so* calm and patient, and on the fourth hand, he's profane and opinionated.
Read 4 tweets
23 Sep
Okay, let's talk about a nice illustration of resisting primitive obsession. Gotta break this writing drought. I'mo freestyle this muse, and I'm rusty, so bear with me.
Before we start. I want you to know how important it is to me that we keep working on change outside the monitor. Please know how proud I am of *every* *little* *thing* you do to help address this world's equity problems. Every little thing helps. Keep it up.

Black Lives Matter.
So, a few months back, my Friday night geek group -- we meet on Tuesday's -- spent a lot of time and had a lot of fun generating random dungeon maps based on the idea of a grid of tiles, each representing a floor, or a wall, or a door, or what-have-you.
Read 36 tweets
22 Sep
The remote conference scene has been a mixed blessing, but I have to say, it's been truly *mixed*, and there have been some great things about it.
I did a conference this year, and for the first time in 20 years of conferencing, I watched every single session. Because I could fidget, smoke, shake my head when I disagreed, stretch, make noises, go pee, and most of all not be exhausted from too much social interaction.
And, in general, I've been to more events in the past 18 months than I was ever able to manage in the past.
Read 6 tweets
21 Sep
My favorite take/spin on the blind men and the elephant is this stunning take from Peter Vaill. It's nearly a page of text, so I'll gist it here, but spell it out below.

gist.github.com/GeePawHill/9fa…
"The relationality of all experience contains challenges to our understanding of organizations that we have barely begun to come to terms with. I can illustrate this by extending the metaphor of the blind men and the elephant."
"In its conventional telling, each blind man had a grip on a different part of the beast, and they were unable to agree on what it was really, really like, that is, as one of Kuhn's 'fixed and neutral
experiences.'"
Read 13 tweets

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