He that has done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged. Benjamin Franklin.

A few months ago a solicitor was jailed for smuggling Class A drugs into jail; I remember the case because of the reported process of corruption: first she agreed to a few minor infractions – smuggling the odd packet of cigarettes. Eventually a line was crossed which led to imprisonment and ruin.

It’s an interesting psychological phenomenon: do someone a favour and somehow you seem to owe them another; DHH’s Vendoritus rant at European RailsConf was about that expectation.

One question is whether it is ever right to take advantage of this; it’s not an interesting question, though. The answer is no – not without repayment. Otherwise it eventually ends badly for both sides.

A better question is how do you avoid being on the other side? It’s about having enough self-esteem to walk away from inequitable relationships, and also paying enough attention to notice the inequities.

I can trace the problems I’m currently experiencing with a client to my earlier tolerance of late payments and acceptance of excuses; at least it’s a lesson learnt.

Unpleasant little man.(Via Daring Fireball.)

Via Dave Snowden:

There’s many more.

Q: So is there a simple rule that captures the essence of TDD?

A: Funny you should ask. There is:

Before writing any production code you must have a failing test. Kent Beck (said something like that)

Q: So, these jsps – they don’t seem to have any tests.

A: Ah yes, but they contain no business or presentation logic. All that stuff is in model and helper classes, which are under test.

Q: Ok, so was there a failing test before you wrote those jsps?

A: Well, no…

Q: So…….

A: Ok, you got me. It bothers me, all right? It complicates the build, and I didn’t get round to it.

Q: Didn’t get round to it?

A: Ok, I’ll sort it out. Satisfied?

Q: Not exactly test-first is it?

A: I’m warning you: shut up now.

(Based on a real conversation that happened in my head.)

Once upon a time a vendor arrived at a software project.

“My product fulfills all your business needs,” he announced. “Just let me sit down and install it, then you’ll see.”

The managers and developers were behind schedule and intrigued, so they agreed. As good as his word the vendor sat down and began to install his product.

“This is going very well,” the vendor announced. “But I just need some help configuring the product for your local system.” A developer rushed in and after a few days work provided the necessary configuration.

“Ah, superb!” said the vendor. “Now this is almost right, but it would be much better if someone could write a custom handler for your propriety input files.” A developer rushed in and after a few days provided the necessary file handlers.

“Now things are just right,” the vendor said. “Oh, but for perfection I expect you’d like to add some custom plugins for your business rules.” A developer rushed in and after a few days provided the business rule plugins. Things continued this way, through custom user screens, auditors, message queue adaptors, authentication, authorisation, and many other customisations.

Eventually the vendor declared the product ready. Everyone was delighted, not least the vendor: as well as enjoying a tasty implementations fee eventually, after much negotiations to sell a company-wide license.

In case you haven’t heard the Stone Soup story it is an old folktale. Typically a traveller arrives in a miserly village and announces that he is making soup for everybody from a stone; he tricks the villagers into seasoning his soup with various ingredients which make a rich and tasty soup. See here, here, and here.

Saw this polite car sticker on the way to the office this morning:

What do we want?

Our view back.

When do we want it?

As soon as it is convenient.

Noticed this lunchtime in the Shelter Bookshop, Stockbridge:

I’ve been copying Brian Marick and using Open Office for writing FIT tests. Ok, it doesn’t produce beautiful proper HTML, but it is readable, and hackable. The table handling is quite easy to use – more suited to FIT tables than Mozilla Composer, and much more fluid than all the td counting you need to do when hand crafting.

I may continue with it, but I’m a bit cautious – if used, it needs to be adopted as a project standard, rather than mixing FIT test editing tools.

Allegedly Lean practices have been introduced to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. The staff have voted for industrial action over their complaints of:

• attempted deskilling of their jobs
• hourly, public, intrusive monitoring
• a claim that Lean has been introduced to cut 8000 jobs
• measures such as removing family photos from their desks

Something has gone seriously wrong. Here’s a few telling quotes from a BBC Radio 4 interview.

Mark Serwotka, president of the Public and Commercial Services Union:

We’ve had a number of Lean experts contact us saying that what we’ve described as being applied at HMRC is nothing to do with Lean and I’m happy to take that at face value, because the output…. is not just dehumanising and deskilling but is now a backlog of 1,134,108 pieces of post that have not yet been opened from taxpayers….

Professor Daniel T Jones, chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy:

I think we saw exactly the same things when Lean was first introduced in manufacturing 15 to 20 years ago….. managers looking for a tool for cost reduction will grasp anything that is going around….. that is in fact a complete mistake because Lean depends on people in the process being involved in the redesign of the flow of work themselves and that cannot take place without their willing involvement….. Lean cannot be misused – it intrinsically depends on the involvement of people.

Agile is a close relative of Lean. As we cross the chasm, expect stories like this. The Agile backlash is coming, and much of it will be justified.

UPDATE: Some links around HMRC and Lean.

• A view from the inside (scroll down to “The curious case of the Inactive Banana”)
• John Sneddon comments
• The consultants view

Other person: I think we should do A.

You: I think we should do B rather than A as B will give us alpha and beta but A won’t.

Other person: Yes, but A gives us omega.

Some non-productive discussion ensues

You: Ok, I suppose it’s not that important. I don’t really agree, but we’ll do A.

Other person: No, we’ll do B. (strongly insists on doing B even if you argue)

I had the above conversation with a colleague last week. I thought it was hilarious and very familiar. I’m not sure what the dynamic is, though.

Brian Marick:

Agile projects have no real defensive walls; all they can do is deliver return on investment and hope the business values it. But we all know that ROI is only a part of what moves businesses. Those in the Agile world all know of resistance to Agile from those middle managers who see it as a threat to their power to command and control. Telling such a person that her sabotage endangers the company’s ROI is like an abbot standing in the path of Christian raiders and threatening them with loss of their immortal souls: sometimes it works, but nowhere near often enough. And it never works with the worshippers of Odin.

I used to refer to Extreme Edinburgh as “The Armed Wing of ”http://www.agilescotland.com/“>Agile Scotland”. Now I’m wondering whether I meant it as a joke.