Andrey Batyuk @ Internet

Add some new pictures I took a week ago at Russian Navy Day celebration here. Take a look at them here.

I am currently working on monthly presentation for the customer, and the feedback that I have got is quite mixed:

When looking at a slide, always ask yourself the following: “If I knew nothing of this but wanted to, can I glean the necessary information from this slide to get a sense of what is going on or would I have to get an explanation?” If the answer is “I would have to get an explanation or attend the presentation”, than more information/explanation is needed on the slide itself or in an Appendix section. Too much information is always preferable to too little!

I do agree with this, partially. First of all, all the needed information must be on the slide, must be brought to the audience, in all the ways of communication – written, verbal, presentations, emails, calls and so on. But, too much information is always worse than having just enough – in the modern world motto “Communication is a key” became a real mess for everyone – there’s way too much unneeded information.

So, indeed, I am adding the missing information to the slides, but at the same time I am going to summarize the rules that i believe must be followed to reduce amount of disturbance for my teams. Someday I will.

You know, I am full of quotes, and I remember some quote every single day.

Today there are two, which are related to the process and, specifically, not following the process.

Dura lex sed lex. – The law is harsh, but that’s the law.

Another one I remember, but can’t remember who said it:

When I arrive to new country, I don’t ask whether the laws are good or bad there. I ask if they are followed.

And you know, it’s getting harder and harder every day to adopt the process when it’s not being followed with no good reason. In my opinion, and as my experience shows, it’s better to have non-perfect process followed by everyone and amend it every week, rather then having noone following any process and everyone shouting “We need one!”.

I can’t remember who said this, may be even remember it all wrong, but the quote is really good.

No process at all – and you need extraordinary people to do simple things.

Too much process – and extraordinary people can’t do extraordinary things.

Unfortunately I have rarely seen the balanced processes, and too often people consider process as a silver bullet. Unluckily there are no ‘silver bullets’, and moreover, there are no immediate positive results from the process change, ever. Never ever.

Kent Beck:

If you don’t have fun, you do something wrong…

Andrey Batyuk:

If I don’t have fun, you do something wrong…

Seriously, I have fun working with great people doing great job. I know that I do something wrong time to time, and I like hearing that feedback as it helps me to improve, though it’s really hard to understand that your greatest team is doing not that well as it could.