Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

My last experience at AYE was in Jerry's Transforming Rules into Guidelines. The "rules" were the internal survival rules that every person develops at a young age. Different people have different rules: "I must make rational decisions", "I must not look stupid", and "I must be perfect", are all examples of common rules. Troubles can arise when we strive to strictly adhere to these rules, which were formed in contexts that are no longer relavant.

In a small group that included Rachel, I identified one of my rules: I must do 'great work' in every aspect of my life. Once identified, rules are ready for transformation. The following is a surprisingly simple exercise that reframed my rule into a guideline...

True or false? I can always do 'great work' in every aspect of my life ... False

True or false? I can sometimes do 'great work' in every aspect of my life ... True

I can do 'great work' in every aspect of my life when... (list three preconditions)

I was surprised by how quickly I was able to list the three preconditions: 1) I am well rested, 2) I feel connected with my wife and children, 3) I feel connected with God.

This tranformation has stuck with me more than any of the other nuggets of wisdom that I took away from AYE. With these preconditions etched into my mind, I am able to focus on keeping them intact rather than spiraling into a vicious cycle of breaking the rule and striving ever-harder not to break it.

Posted by Dave [Link]

On Tuesday, I attended Jean's Satir System Coaching experience. It was another walk down memory lane, reminding me of the family sculpting work I experienced in graduate school. I went into the experience with a bit of skepticism. My skepticism was not focused on Jean or her approach (or Satir's approach) to family therapy. My skepticism was focused on the occasionally overwhelming amount of dedication to Satir's approach I witnessed at AYE. The family therapist in me was a bit annoyed that no other approaches had been or were actively being considered.

During the experience facilitated by Jean, which, as Ron says, cannot possibly be captured in writing (particularly in a blog), I gained a new perspective that extinguished my skepticism...

People like Jerry, Esther, and Johanna provide me with the best example available of taking a specific approach to family therapy and applying it in the context of software development. Watching them work is an incredible opportunity to imitate their achievements. While I do not desire to imitate their/Satir's approach (though there are aspects of it that do fit for me), I can only hope to integrate my preferred approach (narrative therapy) as well as they have into the field of software development.

As I dropped my defensiveness and skepticism, this new perspective provided me with clarity. I need to re-immerse myself into the practice of narrative therapy, and of equal importantance, I need to re-engage it's leading practitioners. Jerry and Virginia together formed an incredibly powerful partnership: they were pioneers in their respective fields. My current hope is to be a catalyst, a connection, to somehow link together some key ideas, practices, and people in order to contribute to software development the concepts I found valuable as a practitioner of narrative therapy.

Note: I need to thank Rajesh for encouraging me during our time together at AYE.

Posted by Dave [Link]

Off-topic, but I can't resist. My mom has her own web site. I'm proud of her and her accomplishments.

Posted by Dave [Link]

I missed seeing Laurent at AYE, and I know I'm not the only one. Laurent blessed the blogosphere with this excellent nugget a couple days ago...

Bossavit's Formulation: If you want to double your failure rate, all you have to do is halve your project length.

Bossavit's Corollary: If you want to increase your success rate, halve your project length.

(Laurent, let me know if I misattributed either of these...)

Posted by Dave [Link]

It was an overcrowded room that housed Jerry's organizational mapping workshop today. It was another walk down memory lane for me: organizational mapping is an exact replica of the family genogram exercises I learned in graduate school. In an earlier conversation with John Suzuki, a long-time intuition of mine was affirmed: families and organizations are very similar. Thus, approaches that were developed for families can often be applied to organizations. Jerry's organizational mapping exercise drove that point home for me.

Staci and I stuck around tonight to mingle with AYE folks. I was surpised and excited when who should appear, but Will Sargent, yet another online acquaintance who I had wanted to meet, but had not expected to see at AYE. We had an excellent evening of drinks and dinner, and even managed to not bore my wife to death with techno-babble.

Back at the hotel, I find myself wondering what Virginia Satir would think of the state of her art 12 years after her death. It's hard for me to judge, since I have studied relatively little of her work compared to many people here at AYE. What I wonder about, though, is whether there has been a significant progression of her work since her death. Clearly, many people in the field of software development find value in Virginia's work, but is Virginia the end? Or are people open to other areas of family therapy that might apply to software development?

Posted by Dave [Link]

I spent the morning learning how to improve the communication of a geographically dispersed team. I came away with some ideas about how to incorporate IM into conference calls, the importance of having people meet face-to-face before they collaborate remotely, being attentive to my posture and environment (standing vs. sitting, having drawing materials) when on a conference call, identifying a call "leader", ensuring that meetings have a feedback loop regarding their effectiveness, and never have more people in a conference call than you would in a face-to-face meeting.

I sat with Jean McLendon at lunch and was given the opportunity to answer my FAQ. It was nice to be able to fearlessly use some of my old family therapy lingo again. Jean is attempting to build a global network of Satir practitioners and I'm interested in the technologies that could be used to facilitate that effort...

Posted by Dave [Link]

Met Rajesh, Tim, Pat, and Esther today, among others. Today's session was an in-depth look at the application of MBTI and Satir's coping stances. It was surreal to exercise my family therapy muscles again amongst a bunch of software folks. As I was telling Pat, I feel like a square peg in a square hole at this conference.

At the end of the day, my wife and I went out alone together for some awesome food and then took a spontaneous adventure to Casino Arizona to play some Texas Hold 'em. Spontaneity is not something we're accustomed to with three kids at home...it was a great night...and I even won some money!

Posted by Dave [Link]

I'm in Phoenix at my first AYE conference. Since I inherited this opportunity from Alan, I must heed his request that I blog about my experiences here. The activities that I am most looking forward to for the next 5 days: pair programming with Patrick Morrison, learning about organizational mapping with Jerry Weinberg, running up Camelback with my wife, hanging out with fellow ThoughtWorkers Rajesh and Tim, trying on my family therapist hat again in Satir System Coaching with Jean McLendon, and finally, the writer's workshop.

We'll see how my post-conference highlights match up with my pre-conference expectations ... stay tuned ...

Posted by Dave [Link]

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