book review: Cross-Cultural Dialogues

July 26th, 2009

I’ve completed Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference. This book on cultural differences was a quick read, amenable to being read in short bursts, and I think GSD teams may find it useful. It’s not by any means a comprehensive guide to help you get out, and stay out, of trouble: I expect one of the other books on my shortlist to fill that purpose. I think it can serve as a good introductory book for raising awareness among experienced people who may question whether these cultural misunderstandings actually occur, or to help anyone realize just how much more common they are than they might have realized. I’m probably more attuned to these incidents than the average software person, and I still found myself saying, “Oh yeah, I never did understand what was going on there” more than a few times. Get a copy for each of your global sites, and have your teams pass it around – I’ll bet it starts a few conversations.

Next up: Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures (and, nowadays, who isn’t?).

Posted in global, references | Comments Closed

Metamorphosis

July 20th, 2009

Aldo, Andy, and I have just co-authored an article entitled “Metamorphosis: Adapting rapidly to change using the IDEAL improvement model” for the Q2 2009 issue of the ABB Review journal. Here’s the abstract:

Corporations must adapt rapidly to changing markets and adopt new technologies to remain competitive. Such adaptations are particularly important in a rapidly changing economic climate. Flexibility and a willingness to change are important qualities that must be fostered and encouraged, at all levels, if businesses are to respond effectively to shifts in product demands or to altered customer requirements. To encourage a positive environment for such change, the process for change must be carefully planned, well managed, properly justified and applied with sensitivity. ABB uses the IDEALSM 1.0 model as a framework to guide improvement processes so that effective changes are deployed efficiently.

The article discusses use of IDEAL for both process improvements, such as within the CMMI framework, and technology improvements guided by architecture evaluation methods such as AHEAD. We hope you enjoy it – comments welcome here, or on twitter @agile_teams!

Posted in ADD, AHEAD, by Aldo, by Karen, CMMi, IDEAL, publications, SEI | 1 Comment »

cybersecurity in RTP

June 23rd, 2009

Last Thursday I attended the IEEE ENCS chapter meeting, for which the featured speakers were two Special Agents from the regional FBI office. The topic was cybersecurity: “Computer Crime, Computer Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Combating High Tech Threats”. The session was nearly full, as well-attended as recent smart grid sessions.

Both speakers kept the audience’s attention by adroitly mixing cybersecurity fundamentals with highlights of local cybercrime cases. I didn’t gain any new insights, but I did pick up a few good reference URLs I hadn’t yet explored: cybercrime.gov, consumer.gov, cert.org/homeusers, governmentsecurity.org, sans.org/newsletters/risk/ or  sans.org/newsletters/ouch/, infragard.net, ncinfragard.org. The NC Infragard organization meets every month, alternating between Raleigh and Charlotte; membership is free, and they offer a free newsletter.

Bonus: At the end of the 90 min talk, the agent from the foreign intelligence squad offered this interesting suggestion for safe surfing without the overhead and system slowdowns of security software: run your browser through a VMware server (or, an audience member suggested, Knoppix).

Posted in events, security, user groups | Comments Closed

technology and culture

June 19th, 2009

For a current project investigating the use of collaboration tools on GSD (global software development) projects, I’ve been assessing the impact of videoconferencing on development team activities. On the plus side is the great potential benefit of visual feedback. On the negative side, I’ve realized, is the great potential to inadvertently offend never-met teammates of a different cultural background with one’s gestures or body language.

To help me better understand these factors, and so I can assess whether they might be useful references for our development teams, I’ve picked up a few books on the topic, including:

  • Gestures: The DO’s and TABOOs of Body Language Around the World
  • Cross-Cultural Dialogues: 74 Brief Encounters With Cultural Difference
  • Kiss, Bow, or Shake Hands (updated edition)
  • Cultural Intelligence: A Guide to Working with People from Other Cultures

Also, towards the general topic of GSD and cultural differences, I’m [re-]reading:

  • The Psychology of Computer Programming
  • Cultural Diversity: Its Social Psychology

Recommendations for other good resources on this topic are welcome! I’ll summarize my opinions of the usefulness of these books for GSD purposes in this blog.

Posted in global, references | 1 Comment »

why even defect prevention isn’t enough

May 12th, 2009

During a recent stay at a reasonably nice hotel, I was looking for a place to hang up my wet raincoat when I noticed this sign on the wall, up high. Clearly there had been problems in the past with sprinkler malfunctions, and after one or more incidents of ‘defect correction’ (fixing the sprinkler malfunctions), someone did root cause analysis (e.g. why? … why? …), identified coat hangers as the culprit, and took this action to try to prevent future defects.

Commendable, right?

But I looked around the entire hotel room and realized I still had no good place to hang my wet raincoat.

This exemplifies a saying I recall hearing in an SEI Six Sigma training class last year, and earlier in a QFD class:
    “Just because nothing is wrong, doesn’t mean anything is right.”
Taking corrective and preventive actions, and driving defect levels towards zero, may be useful and necessary, but is not sufficient to achieve true high quality. Satisfaction of real customer needs matters most. It would be neither hard nor expensive to install a coat hook somewhere in the hotel room for wet/snowy/dirty/… outergarments. Adding this small amenity would not only dilute the temptation to guests who might otherwise hang wet coats on the sprinklers, they’d be less likely to drape them over the chairs in the rooms, which probably isn’t good for the wood or upholstery, …

Posted in 6 sigma, QFD, SEI | Comments Closed

insights into human decision-making

April 20th, 2009

Thanks to a tweet by Guy Kawasaki (@guykawasaki), today I found a great NYT magazine article: “The Green Issue: Why Isn’t the Brain Green?” It quickly segued from the specifics of poll results on the importance of climate change into an interesting discussion of how humans make decisions under uncertainty and risk – highly relevant to software development!

Posted in publications | Comments Closed

20 Things Programmers Say When Something Is Not Working

April 3rd, 2009

I found this today via @ahkai on Twitter, and it made me LOL: 20 Things Programmers Say When Something Is Not Working. I do agree with GirlGeek’s comment that “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature” definitely should have been on the list!

Posted in humor | Comments Closed

overcoming language barriers

April 2nd, 2009

On Feb 28 I discovered and installed the Global Translator plugin for WordPress. The plugin supports 4 different translation engines, with Google providing by far the most choices. I built a short list of friends who are native (or at least fluent) speakers of many of the available languages, configured the plugin for source language English and those options for target languages (SV IT ES FR PL HI EL DE zh-CN zh-TW KO JA), then I “called in favors” to test the plugin. Within a week, the verdicts were pretty much in. 

Conclusion? Most of my testers expressed the opinion that it was more confusing, funnier, or both to read the translation than to cope with the English. The Asian languages were especially noted as not being well done. The European languages which are closest to the origins of English, not surprisingly, seemed to fare the best.

Certainly the content of this blog, which focuses on software development, is not representative of everything that anyone might want to translate from English to another language, or from another language to English. The engine may handle general personal correspondence much better, and given that Google just announced this week that they now support built-in translation in Gmail, that’s probably the focus of their engine development efforts. I expect the capabilities of translation engines will continue to improve, and I plan to monitor them. But for my purposes, I don’t think they are anywhere near ready for ‘industrial’ use yet.

I know I am lucky to have such great, helpful friends!  Thanks to Elizabeth, Sayuri, Qingfeng, Aldo, Dright, Yonghee, Sami, Jan, and Jim for their kindness and assistance.

Posted in global, tools | Comments Closed

GSD / GSE on LinkedIn

March 24th, 2009

Recently I searched LinkedIn for a group for people who, like me, are interested in how global software development (GSD) teams can work together more effectively. When I didn’t find one, I started one. Please consider joining the Global Software Development (GSD) group on LinkedIn if this topic interests you too!

I have yet to find a good aggregator or portal that collects relevant blog posts, topics, etc. on GSD, either. If you know of one (or more), please post it in the LinkedIn group or send me a message via email or twitter. Thanks! (Eventually, if none turns up, maybe we’ll build one … ‘better to light a candle than to curse the darkness’)

Posted in communities, global | Comments Closed

March 24 – Ada Lovelace Day

March 24th, 2009

What a great idea: The Ada Lovelace Day Collection

For instance, here’s a well-written tribute to Anita Borg in honor of the event: Honoring Anita Borg on Ada Lovelace Day

Posted in events | Comments Closed

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