Debunking Monte Carlo myths

This started as a question on reddit about “if you don’t use Monte Carlo for forecasting, why don’t you”, and it uncovered all kinds of incorrect assumptions about what it is and why you’d use it. We unpack some of these here.

Quick tips for demos

I’ve seen a lot of bad team demos over the years. Here are two fast tips to improve those.

Imprints in the ground

After a forest fire has passed, some trees will be left standing but scorched from the fire. Others, however, will have disappeared entirely. Sometimes the trunk and then the roots will continue to smolder until there is nothing left but ash, and then with some rain, even the ash will disappear.

When “make it visible” is the wrong approach

My general approach to fixing almost any organizational problem starts with “make it visible”. Make the problem visible enough and sometimes other people will step in and fix it without any effort on my part.

Delivery pressure

I once engaged with a team that had just finished the development of a new service and were blocked, waiting for legal approval, before they could turn it on. They effectively had nothing to do and so management thought this was a good time to bring some coaches in.

Controlling emotions

Brain scientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor talks about the 90 second rule for emotions. She describes the chemical release of an emotion only lasting 90 seconds. Effectively that means that if you’re feeling sad or angry, you’re only feeling that for 90 seconds at a time.

Close those bugs

Do you have bugs that have been open for a long time and that are low priority? Cancel them.

What to measure

I frequently talk to clients about metrics, and there is usually an understandable desire to measure too much. “Let’s measure these fifty things everyday so that we know if everything is ok.”

Code coverage revisited

I’ve had several conversations recently with people arguing that mandated code coverage numbers are a positive thing. For example “all code must have 90% code coverage”.