launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Gary Poster <gary.poster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 06/18/2012 08:23 AM, Jonathan Lange wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 15, 2012 at 10:22 PM, Gary Poster <gary.poster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Hi Jono.  I hope the retrospective goes well.  We'd be very happy to
>> hear your ideas on changes and improvements and experiments.  (I still
>> need to write up today's retrospective but I'm out of time ATM.)
>>
>> I'll update the lists as you suggest.

(Done, in a "get it done quick for now" sort of way.)

>>
>> I'm not sure yet exactly how I'll integrate the Covey ideas, but I'm
>> very interested in trying to do so. Depending on a cross-team developer
>> (or developer) is definitely one of the more consistently difficult
>> things we've encountered, both in the open source world and not.
>> Occasionally it works fabulously, but more often it falls into a hole.
>>
>> Items 3-5 are particularly easy to miss, and yet they also are hard when
>> the natural consequences are only on your side.  Interesting to think
>> about incentives ("unnatural consequences"?) in that context, but it
>> feels like that might backfire sometimes.
>>
> 
> I think of incentives as "imposed consequences". I think natural ones
> are more motivating[1], even if they don't directly apply to you. 

Definitely agreed, though...

> I
> think this goes doubly so when all the people involved are in the same
> organization and thus are (hopefully!) on the same side.
> 
> Compare the vague sense of unease and guilt I get when I know I'm
> procrastinating on a review for someone vs knowing that while I'm not
> reply this, Benji literally has nothing to do and everyone working on
> Launchpad is waiting on slow build runs and I'll never get
> auto-completing tags on the +filebug form at this rate. Also, if I
> don't reply before Friday he's probably going to fork and then it'll
> be heaps of hard work to ever get patches out of him again.

...I think this is true but it reminds me of school discussions about
how well having an enlightened monarch works out as long as you can
guarantee that the monarch is enlightened.  That is, what you describe
is a motivation for...an "enlightened" developer?  And/or one who has
the time/energy/discipline to remember to be enlightened?

> 
> I don't really know how to integrate the Covey delegation thing
> either. It's still pretty new to me and am looking forward for more
> ways to experiment with it. Want to do some of my work? :P

I'm happy and appreciative to get some inspiration for experiments. :-)

> 
> There's also the David Allen trick of keeping a "Waiting For" list[2]
> and reviewing it from time to time. That one is a life-changer.

We do that on that on the kanban board with a "tracking" lane ATM.  It's
nice because cards sometimes move from our work to "tracking" and back
again.  We only have a tracking lane for the currently active project,
but that has been sufficient so far.

> 
> cheers,
> jml
> 
> [1] ISTR, "Drive" and other bits of research that show that incentives
> often backfire, as people would often rather cop the punishment or do
> without the reward than do the actual thing.

That jibes with my intuition.

Thank you

Gary

> [2] Or a @WAITING email folder. Or both.