Ar(c)tic Afternoon

As I thought, no matter how well I plan, nothing ever works like it. I didn't go to the Nobel Museum, I didn't get to Skansen, instead I went to the National Art Museum, had lunch, went shopping, was terrified of the thousands of other people who were shopping too, almost was trapped in a toy store and couldn't get out, went into another store and the same thing almost happened again, and after the third one, I stopped shopping, took the underground (the Tunnel Banana as it is called here) back to my hotel and was relieved.

The weather is still terribly cold, I've no idea of the temperature and there is no snow. I'm tired and happy, because it seems I managed to avoid a flu, which was making my throat sore on Wednesday. With a bit of garlic, warm clothing, no exercise and a little bit overmedication, the flu seems to have been defeated.

I am currently reading "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", which I think my motorcycle driver friends Marko (both Mänttis and Marko-Marko), Sascha and Katrin, (didn't Björn have motorcycle, too?) should read too, if they haven't already. I'm not finished with it yet and it is going deeper and deeper into the meaning of Quality. Which is interesting for me. I can already now see why this book became such a classic. It is clearly written and makes sense.

Another book I have with me (I bought it in Helsinki along with the "Zen...", as I ran out of books to read) is Richard P. Feynman's "Don't You Have Time to Think?", which is collection of his correspondence over the years. It sheds light on the character of the world-famous physicist and bongo-drummer.

The comic-on-the-road is the nineth tradepaperback in the Swamp Thing series titled "Infernal Triangles". It contains stories by Rick Veitch and an issue written by Jamie Delano and one scripted by Stephen Bissette. No Alan Moore anymore, but the character of Swamp Thing had by this time a solid foundation for other great writers to build on. It is still good fun and relaxing to read, even though there aren't necessarily as many groundbreaking (pun unintended) things as with Moore's run. But the plant-centric point-of-view certainly makes for interesting reading at its best.

In Stockholm

I'm in Sweden now. Actually I did the first ever DayTick session here yesterday. This was the last training session of 2007. Overall, I'm quite happy with the results of this year, and I'll be compiling a set of notes summarizing this year and the last.
It was nice to see that my paper in Software Quality Professional proved useful. That was the main reason to get this gig! I do hope the evaluation turns out well and I can expect to come here more next year. We'll just have to wait and see.

The weather here is wintery although there is no snow, but the air is definitely cold enough that if it just would rain, it would snow. I don't know about the temperature, but it sure feels cold outside. I'm planning to go to the Nobel Museum and Skansen today, but let's see what I did do later.

A month later...

November has gone you see,
December crept like a thief on me.

What actually happened then?
What was important back when
November ruled the almanacks
was time the thing you lacked?
Or was it laziness, apathy or fear
that left the blog empty and drear?

A bit of everything I guess
this blogger must confess
and for that I am truly sorry
but I do have to say
it is my life, my blog, my time
I am not going to worry
if I fail to post yet another day
as long as I feel fine

You yourself should do the same
take responsibility for being lame
just don't let others dictate
what you should do, how you should feel
It is yours, the mind and its state
it's your life, live it now, don't be late
it's now or never, believe it, it's real
one day it'll be over and you'll be late
forever.

This is my creative apology
a little lonesome monology
if you want to critique this figment
of imagination, leave a comment

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Yeah, well November went past and fast. It consisted of preparing for the trip to Finland, making phone calls, convincing people of the value of Tick-the-Code and making general arrangements. In this Virpi was once again invaluable. Without her itinerary, I would have been out of place many times. With it, I've managed to keep my appointments and to know when I have free time to concentrate on my book, for example.

For the past two weeks, I've been in Finland. I've conducted several trainings, as you can read from the Customers page. It is extremely rewarding to see software professionals try the method and see how different it is to what they've done before. Most notice these details and see even maybe why they should work. The ones who don't understand the reasons behind certain things, shouldn't change anything in the method, because they might destroy something important without even realising.

One example of an important detail, which seems extremely difficult for some people to understand, is the fact that you should start checking code with ridiculously simple rules. I might truly simple. Rules that anybody who can read, could check for. Rules so simple that the computer could check them automatically. Some people see that it is wasteful to do manually, because you can do it with a program/machine. But the whole point behind it is to get the mind in the right state for effective checking, to warm-up the brain for the more difficult rules to come. If you skip this stage, you probably won't reach the high productivity figures, which Tick-the-Code can produce otherwise. There's nothing wrong with the original method, but you've managed to (inadvertently) break it by not understanding the reason behind the simple checking and skipping it.

In fact, I'm beginning to consider inadvertent acts of people as the most dangerous aspect against quality work. We could say that there is one right way to make something. If you are not comfortable with the concept of One right way, replace it mentally with a very limited amount of ways. For every one right way of making something, there are infinite number of ways of making it wrong. The probability against reaching a favorable result in any undertaking is staggeringly high. By focusing the human intellect we conquer these odds and find the one right way. Any time we forget something, or fail to notice a consequence or fail to consider an alternative or fail to prove a concept, we are inadvertently straying from the one right way. Luck is against us just because of the probability pattern just described. We can't rely on luck, we must rely on our intellect and skills. Without focus, we'll stray.

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Suomeksi: Pahoitteluni, että blogin päivityksessä on ollut yli kuukauden mittainen tauko. Toivon, että en ole aiheuttanut tällä laiminlyönnilläni turhaa huolestumista kummankaan blogin lukijan mielessä. Pistäkää toki kommenttia, jos haluatte kuulla kuulumisistamme useammin.

Parin viikon Suomen matka on tänään ohi. Uusia Tick-the-Code -ammattilaisia on taas syntynyt ja yli 450 ohjelmistosuunnittelijaa on koulutuksen saanut. Seuraavana ohjelmassa on ensi vuoden taktiikan suunnittelu ja Saksan markkinoiden todellinen avaaminen.