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Software For Your Head

Jim McCarthy book (Pattern Language?) (2002) ISBN:0201604566 - "The Core" (v1.0)

Big Picture (p296 in Ch13): see Product Team.

Excerpts

Table of Contents

PART I CHECK IN 1

  • Chapter 1 The Elements of Check In 11
    • Overcoming Distance 11
    • The Check In Protocol 12
    • The Check Out Protocol 13
    • The Passer Protocol 13
    • Connection 14
    • Problem Behaviors 14
    • Patterns Synergistic with Check In 15
  • Chapter 2 Check In Patterns and Protocols 19
  • Chapter 3 Check In Antipatterns 53
    • Antipattern: Too Emotional 53
    • Antipattern: No Hurt Feelings 63
    • Antipattern: Wrong Tolerance 66
  • Chapter 4 Other Patterns in the Check In Family 69

PART II DECIDER 105

  • Chapter 5 The Elements of Decider 111
    • Other Decision-Related Elements 114
    • Antipatterns 115
  • Chapter 6 Decider Patterns and Protocols 117
  • Chapter 7 Decider Antipatterns 149
    • Antipattern: Resolution Avoidance 149
    • Antipattern: Oblivion 154
    • Antipattern: Turf 158
    • Antipattern: Boss Won’t Give Power 163
    • Antipattern: Team Quackery 165

PART III ALIGNING 179

  • Chapter 8 The Elements of Alignment 185
    • Personal and Team Alignment 185
  • Chapter 9 Alignment Pattern and Protocol 189
  • Chapter 10 Alignment Antipatterns 199
    • Antipattern: Not Enough People 199
    • Antipattern: Align Me 208
  • Chapter 11 Alignment Patterns 215

PART IV SHARED VISION 261

  • Chapter 12 The Elements of Shared Vision 269
    • Aspects of Shared Vision 271
    • Patterns Involved in the Shared Vision Process 276
  • Chapter 13 Shared Vision Patterns and Protocols 279
  • Chapter 14 Shared Vision Antipatterns 303
    • Antipattern: Blinder 303
    • Antipattern: Technicality 305
    • Antipattern: Recoil 313
    • Antipattern: Feedback 317
  • Chapter 15 The Perfection Game Pattern 325
    • Playing and Perfecting 325

PART V APPENDIXES 333

  • Appendix A The Core Lexicon
  • Appendix B BootCamp Material 353
  • Appendix C The Core Protocols V. 1.0 335

THIRTEEN: Shared Vision Patterns and Protocols

PATTERN: SHARED VISION

PROBLEM: You work without deciding together what you are going to create.

PROBLEM 1: NO VISION

PROBLEM 2: FALSE VISION

PROBLEM 3: VICTIMIZATION AND SCAPEGOATING

SOLUTION: First and always, make sure that your team is aligned around its vision

SHARED VISION PROTOCOL

PATTERN: METAVISION

PROBLEM: There’s no purposeful, institutionally supported approach to the management of visions

SOLUTION: Envision the practice of vision making and then practice it continuously

PATTERN: FARVISION (Shared Mission)

PROBLEM: You work hard, burn out, and wonder why you bother

IF YOU TOLERATE IT, YOU INSIST ON IT

Four laws define your level of vigilance in world building:*

  • If you tolerate it, you insist on it.
  • If you insist on it, it will be supplied.
  • If you see a problem, you own it.
  • *If you ignore a problem, you’ll see more of it.

A person can only achieve his potential by being intolerant of the malignant and embracing the beneficent. The consistent practices required by such a personal policy inevitably lead to more rational and simpler ways--not only in you, but also in your environment. The millions of product teams that make up the high-tech industry could become the central emerging community. They may well be the most critical cultural elements and, boom or bust, they constitute the most influential segment of civilization in this era. Unfortunately, many such teams are blocked from grander achievements by their failure to really think things through and walk through the design of the world they are creating together. They haven’t dreamed it and visualized it all the way to the end, and the team members haven’t connected around it. They have no common picture of how their vision will look in either the long or the short term. Generally, these teams lack a thoroughly imagined, well-scrubbed intention behind their work, which motivates and drives them onward, despite anything and everything. They do not share a common purpose that is powerful enough to attract the required resources, and to transform team members’ SharedVisions into accessible, real products.

Perhaps the vitality of our era can be found in the idea of connectedness. Perhaps we are in the beginning of the Connected Era. People will increasingly function in a less time-bound/place-bound style. And yet their presence and levels of engagement may well be greater. The curious, easy intimacy of things like chat suggest this is so, as does the marked majority preference for ATMs over interaction with bank tellers. Regardless, the presence of our networked, connected colleagues will certainly be more virtual. The energy and focus of contemporary civilization (if not yet all--or even most-- governments) have shifted tremendously away from isolated, time-delayed engagement with the greater world, and toward the more connected simultaneous I/O of the Connected Era. Much of this “connection energy” has been nurtured by and distributed through the successful cultures of many Information Era companies. (Information Age)

SOLUTION: Insist that work you do have a long-term, noble purpose

Achieving a useful FarVision requires an aligned team that meets the following criteria:

  • It demands candor and insists on integrity.
  • It is fueled by passion.
  • It is focused on achieving positive effects.

The factors previously inhibiting the team from creating a SharedVision are addressed by the virtues the team members began practicing after their Personal Alignments. On an aligned team, the Alignments are honest and true.

Remember that the qualities now available to the team include not only your courage, but also the entire collection of desirable elements that the various other team members are now pursuing. These goals typically include passion, connection, creativity, fun, self-care, and integrity.

THE FAR VISION PROTOCOL

After having completed Alignment, write a statement with your team that best expresses what the world will look like when your work together is done. Unless the statement leaps out at you, use the Passionometer protocol to align the team around its core values.

  • The FarVision must be imaginative
  • The FarVision must be measurable
  • The FarVision statement should be just a few words, ideally no more than ten words.

Use the PerfectionGame to perfect your FarVision

The team should unanimously support the FarVision, using Decider.

Next, form a product vision--a vision statement for the first Version. This statement should follow the same guidelines as the FarVision statement. It should describe the most important thing the team can do now to move toward the world depicted in its FarVision.

Examples of FarVision statements and Version statements follow:

  • Put a man on the moon.
    • Version 1: Orbit the earth.
  • A computer on every desk.
    • Version 1: Software that’s easy to use.
  • World peace.
    • *Version 1: Peace in our country

THE PASSIONOMETER PROTOCOL

PATTERN: VERSION (Increment)

PROBLEM: You are engaged in a feature war with a competitor or have an unwieldy list of feature requests from customers.

SOLUTION: Create a sequence of product Versions. Each Version must accomplish a discrete step toward the FarVision.

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