Heather McLean

In my new environment, we’re growing so fast that space is becoming an issue very quickly. We now have resources spread between two offices in different cities (luckily within 10 minutes of each other, though). We’re also considering our options on hiring some coding facilities in Canada or elsewhere for support work, though we have no plans for overseas yet. Due to space constraints, we have also talked about letting folks work from home part of the time.

Still, in a fully agile environment this poses some difficult challenges. The agile culture has emphasized team co-location and face-to-face interactions heavily as a best practice, but obviously in this scenario that’s not likely to be possible. This disrupts team interaction, project visibility, and a variety of other positive aspects of the agile methodology.

There is a never-ending plethora of tips for distributed agile teams, but obviously there is no one-size-fits-all solution. I’ve been brainstorming for a while, and over the next couple of weeks I’m going to try and prepare some solution proposals for the executives here. I’ll let you know what I discover.

If you have any suggestions of your own, feel free to share them.

A post from Adam Martin inspired today’s deep thought. In his post, he refers to a form of product management strategy (or rather, anti-strategy) known as “pure, blind, Hope.” I’ve also heard this espoused more romantically as the “if you build it, they will come” approach, though that generally applies to an earlier point in the product lifecycle. It’s a form of hubris that appears frequently at executive-level product management, though people at all levels can be guilty of it.

Generally what happens is that someone comes up with the “killer product idea,” and then pitches it with lots of pizazz and hooplah (typically accompanied by flashy PowerPoint slides) that show how awesome it is and how people are just dying to use it… without actually doing any hard research or formulating an actual plan. They convince the people holding the purse strings to fork over unthinkable sums of money to bring the project to market. Even if it doesn’t flop outright, the lack of vision will eventually sent it into a death spiral, and all the while management will continue to shovel money into the sinking ship in the hopes that a miracle will occur. It’s a bizarre form of product management that I’ve never quite understood even though I see it all the time. To a degree, it contributes to a “muck flinging” approach as well: management will continue to throw products at the wall until one of them sticks.

All of this could be avoided with an actual strategy for building and sustaining the product. Unfortunately, that does require the expenditure of brainpower and legwork to do some research. Important things to know before you ever begin are:

• What is the product’s purpose? Why are we doing this? (“Because it’s cool” can sometimes be a valid answer, but it shouldn’t be the only one.)
• Who is going to use this product? How can we excite them about it and target those potential users specifically without necessarily spending gobs of money to blanket the market with advertising?
• How do we make money off the product at launch? Or, how do we position ourselves to turn a profit later (without relying on additional infusions of capital, preferably)?
• What happens after launch? Where is the product headed in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years?

If those in charge of product development would sit down and answer these basic questions about their products instead of focusing on glitz and glamor, it would go far to stop the habit of dumping money into something that will only wilt and die. Even then, the strategy you came up with at the beginning may not be applicable later; I recommend re-answering these questions from scratch periodically so that you can adjust as needed.

(To see where this started, go back to the first post.)

Mostly I just wanted to post a couple of articles from Bruce Byfield, specifically referencing sexism in the FOSS movement, but I think it applies to all of IT, or any technical field for that matter. I thought his arguments were presented in a very professional, non-confrontational manner. It’s not surprising that a lot of men take it as a personal attack, however.

• Sexism: Open Source Software’s Dirty Little Secret
• Writing about FOSS sexism

The second one is actually about the fallout from the first one, and what a fallout it was. I won’t even bother talking about the comments this time (specifcally I’m looking at Slashdot, here), since it would cause one to despair on the future of the human race. And I thought the comments over at the Register were bad! It should come as no surprise that the article itself got tagged “troll” by the mysoginistic members of the audience.

As one of the rare female members of the IT workforce, I can always support the inclusion of more women. Thus, I applaud Microsoft’s investment in the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Sadly, after reading some of the comments to the article, it becomes blatantly obvious why women tend to avoid IT. You can see some of the very best in male chauvanism:

From aptly named “Anonymous Coward”:

“and they are innovative technical thinkers”

I love women as much as the next guy. Women have their role in society, but innovative? In 28 years in IT I’ve never seen a woman come up with an answer to a difficult technical problem that she’d not read somewhere.

From “Brian 29,” obviously trying to be funny but exemplifying how a lot of other men see us:

I saw the headline in my rss feed and thought this would be about booth babes. I was a little disappointed, but I guess I should have known better when it didn’t say NSFW….

At least “TW Burger” admits what he/she says is sexist, I think trying to be insightful, but really just advocating pushing us into “traditionally female” roles:

I can not comment in any way, shape, or form without sounding like a sexist pig. However, here goes: Reverse/Positive discrimination grants like this are usually is the brain-child of someone with a single minded agenda that ignores that the money would be better spent elsewhere. There are very few women in IT because they do not want to be in IT. Spend the $1 million on getting women into careers they want. Daughters of rich families do not become assembly line workers, maids, or receptionists. I can foresee this money being ladled onto women who do not need the cash or those that would not normally take, and have no real interest in, IT taking free courses simply because it didn’t cost anything and would look good on a resume.

Steve Roper on the surface makes what would seem to be a logical point, but he also forgets that men are already in a position of power, making it less appropriate to give them certain kinds of assistance:

… Feminism isn’t about *equal* rights, it’s about *women’s* rights. That’s why it’s called FEMinism.

A few years ago we had a similar campaign here in Australia to get more men into teaching positions and the government proposed a subsidy for men entering teacher-training courses. What happened?

The whole scheme was kiboshed within weeks of the proposal by angry feminists in the Education Department and the so-called “Equal Opportunity” Commission, who called the scheme sexist and discriminatory against women. They did not, however, utter so much as a squeak when TAFE (technical college) started an equally discriminatory program to get more women into the IT courses. But such double standards are par for the course these days.

Anyways, there are dozens more that you can read at the Register. It is these attitudes that cause women not to want to enter IT (or any predominantly male profession, for that matter), not any lack of ability or interest. Males in large groups tend to create a hostile environment for women, either by cause or accident. Sometimes it’s just being complacent without realizing what you’re doing. It can also start with a girl’s parents steering her away from “un-lady-like” professions, stunting her opportunities from the very beginning.

As a general disclaimer, I will say that I have had the pleasure of working with many wonderful men over the years. I’ve had many supportive male colleagues. I don’t want it to seem like I’m blaming the entire male population for the transgressions of a select few. On the other hand, I’ve also had to deal with a few not-so-stellar individuals who have done a range of injustices such as downplaying my contributions to the team simply for being a woman, patronizing me, and even sexual harassment. These few heartbreaking encounters can really color the experience negatively.