What matters? (or does not matter?)
I’ll summarize with four common common sayings:
- Less is more
- Divide and Conquer
- Fail FAST and fail OFTEN…
- KISS – Keep It Simple (keep it simply simple)
I read Getting Real and extracted a few items for comment – my comments are shown as bullet points. Note: Quotes below are from Getting Real (37Signals.com)
“Most of the time you spend is wasted on things that just don’t matter. If you can cut out the work and thinking that just don’t matter, you’ll achieve productivity you’ve never imagined.”
- Numbers are always fun – what they might mean changes depending upon your perspective. Some percentage of all of our time is pretty much wasted; a small percentage is usually/hopefully really productive/beneficial. What are your time slices like?
“When you have a long stretch when you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made.”
- Finding your zone is truly a wonderful experience. Many performing artists manage to do this ‘on-stage’ – this contrasts quite a bit with folks working alone – can you imagine yourself into the zone? Being able to reach a highly productive level of focus (or performance) is ideal for any problem solving person or team – like musical performance it can seem easy with practice. Of course it does help when the environment is conducive to your favoured working style.
“Programming and Mozart’s Requiem
A single good programmer working on a single task has no coordination or communication overhead. Five programmers working on the same task must coordinate and communicate. That takes a lot of time… The real trouble with using a lot of mediocre programmers instead of a couple of good ones is that no matter how long they work, they never produce something as good as what the great programmers can produce. Five Antonio Salieris won’t produce Mozart’s Requiem. Ever. Not if they work for 100 years.
- This applies to more than just programming – finding one or two high-level performers to handle the impossible AND having folks with developing skills is a real win since the team not only solves problems or delivers results but they also foster/develop new folks. In a really tight environment you might out-source the mundane, day-to-day stuff so your local Mozart(s) have the time to really get things done…
- Hmm – items 1-4 at the top of this post…
_blank_ “won’t really matter if you don’t have the right people on board to implement them. [snip]… You need people who are passionate about what they do.”
- This is key for any small, entrepreneurial endeavour or business venture – the other part of this is that the right people at stage one may not be the right people at stage X…
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