Mike Bowler

Fairness

We have a biological need for fairness. If we perceive a situation that is unfair, even if that unfairness doesn’t directly affect us, the anterior insula is activated¹. The insula is a key part of our brain, relating to empathy².

Psychological Safety: The key to happy, high-performing people and teams by Radecki and Hull, 2018 ↩
Uddin LQ, Nomi JS, Hébert-Seropian B, Ghaziri J, Boucher O. Structure and Function of the Human Insula. J Clin Neurophysiol. 2017 Jul;34(4):300-306. doi: 10.1097/WNP.0000000000000377. PMID: 28644199; PMCID: PMC6032992. ↩

Understanding the users

My very first professional programming job was at a large bank that had invested in a full UX lab. One-way glass, cameras, and a full setup where we could watch real branch staff using the software we had been working on.

Tip: Run tests in random order

Almost every automated test framework has the ability to run the tests in random order and some even do it that way by default. If you aren’t already running your tests in random order then start now. You’ll be amazed at what problems this will uncover.

Underutilized skills and talent

A common push-back to pairing or ensemble/mobbing work is that not everyone can contribute and therefore it would be a waste to have them there. “We’re building an iPhone app and our backend people can’t help”.

No blockers

When I was a kid, we liked to play with two way radios. I’d say something and end it with “over”. Then my friend would say something and again “over”. The word “over” had no actual meaning to us, except to indicate that we’d finished speaking.

Excessive sub-tasks

I worked with a team once that had gotten into the habit of creating sub-tasks for every little thing they could think of. This list included such obvious items as “write the code” and “test the code” and a typical story would have about twenty of these sub-tasks attached.

Ambiguity in wording

If I say that a thing costs five dollars but I don’t specify if that’s Canadian Dollars, US Dollars, or Australian Dollars then we might all think we understand the price but we don’t, because I used language that sounded precise and yet was actually ambiguous. What I think I said and what others think I said were substantially different.