Use gray logic, Luke

Let me take the liberty to start the serious theme with a comic analogy in order to raise the reader, your mood and liberate your consciousness. For those who in the tank did not see the classic saga * star wars * - it’s about using the mysterious Force, as Obi Wan’s ghost whispered to Luke Skywalker (pictured) and that finally helped him (Luke), using a light fighter, to break to knock down an enemy military station of planetary size with one rocket.

So now, seriously, we will talk about the gray logic, lies, compromises, the human factor, political games. About what it threatens, and how it affects the development process, the relations between people. Is it necessary and possible to deal with this and how ...
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Nature has endowed man with powerful intellect, which represents the models of the world around him in gray logic. Imagine that you created an object model, the method codes in which operate not with black-and-white (BW) logic (true - false or 1 and 0), but gray, where a logical expression can have a value of 0.7 or even 0.5. And this value can mutate, adapt to changes in the surrounding world.

Our communication tools, books, and methods of exchanging ideas are far behind such models - because they use BW logic.

Gray logic is a powerful weapon against lies, demagogy and political games. It was very difficult for me to switch from simple B & W rules and processes with which I worked as a simple programmer. In the "adult" life of PM, everything turned out to be more difficult ...


Gray logic

I did not read psychology books, all you see is my experience (PM and analyst) and my conclusions. I will be happy to hear your critical remarks and enrich my view on this difficult problem.

So what is gray logic (hereinafter for brevity - SL)? This is how we really appreciate the world around us.

People are not binary computers. We think in gray logic. What kind of person is Vanya Petrov? Is he good or bad? He is in the middle - he is gray. Our same thoughts and actions. We learned to communicate, write and read. But, in communication and writing, we use black and white (BH) logic. Look at our laws or technical manuals, textbooks - these are the codes of BW logic.

Remember the childhood meme : "... and the child asked what is good and what is bad?"

What does it mean that I acted badly? How bad is it? Worse or better than yesterday? We say “bad” and show a black card. But, this “bad” is interpreted by the brain differently in different people. What we say has a hidden conflict with how we think.

Lies and gray logic.

All people are lying - said Dr. House and, in principle, just a little too far. We cannot convey how we think or feel with words ... And that means we almost lie.

However, I cannot fully agree with House ... A lie in the literal sense is a deliberately distorting what we know or how we evaluate ...

Dialogue * from life * (participants - me and my top manager):

- The client is not very happy. I have not seen him like this yet! We should use the principle that the customer is always right? Competitors breathe in our backs! We want to lose all customers ?! You understand me?
- Yes. I went to work. (and in mind: “nothing, it will reach them tomorrow, that introducing products through content management is idiocy. I’m not changing anything.”)

Come tomorrow

- You have already made changes to the administrative part?
- Not yet.
- Nenad ... I convinced the client that it is better to introduce products in a separate page from the content. I defended our point of view. It was a difficult conversation ...
- Wonderful! (in mind: what did I think ... And I still believed that it was not the client who guessed it ...)

We exchanged false ceremonial statements - but remained with our logical models. My boss still thinks that he is the most cunning and diplomatic person on earth, and I have not changed my view of the system we are building. The gray logic helped us.

When I started to manage, it was very hard for me to “drive in” - how you could just lie, troll, cheat, change the rules, and in the end the project ends in success.

Interestingly, knowing about the ST can recognize a lie or demagoguery. This is when details are avoided. When used too many words to describe simple things. When a clear picture envelops the emotionally-swamped cloud.

SL and Process

Books on Life Cycles, Project Management are written in B & W logic. This makes Processes very vulnerable in real life. The human factor ...

Imagine a simulation model, where one computer is the customer and the other is the performer. Well, maybe another plus financier, analyst, project manager. Established rules. The whole project was a great success without conflicts. Why can't we humans? Simply we are arranged differently. And this is generally not bad. Often, breaking the rules leads to the discovery of new phenomena or properties of nature and an improvement in the standard of living of millions of people. But in project management, gray logic is the dark side of power.

In books on Scrum or XP, a bright black and white picture is described that your brain likes because of its B & W simplicity. And have you ever wondered why this book is a bright, expressive black and white graffiti, and you get an inexpressive gray spot on your company?

What to do with “inadequate” clients from the point of view of the Process who violate all possible rules of the Process itself and logical rules of communication? Somewhere in the Blogosphere, I came across the post of a certain Parabellum, in which it sounded cheerfully: “I am dismissing bad clients”. Cool said for BW books! And what will you do in real life if you choose only adequate clients? "Casting" will be units.

What are we doing in this case? We put aside the secondary rules, find out why the client is motivated in this project - and communicate with him constantly reminding him of the points of his motivation.

The customer is generally easy to understand. He is interested in the result - a working, money-generating software system. He is generally not interested in the development process. He is deeply indifferent to the "inviolable" Sprint in Scrum, when you can not change the set of features in the design. And if he gets a call from some “rock star” from prospective clients or stakeholders and asks to make a presentation of the system in 2 weeks with 2 additional features. What do you think your process will stand under the onslaught of the client, sales and top (top manager)?

This should be treated from the standpoint of gray logic - for you, Scrum should not be a BW axiom, you should be prepared for the fact that Sprint’s integrity has a logical power of 0.6 - 0.7 - but not one.

In general, the implementation of a complex Process requires serious human resources. It is necessary to introduce people who will search for bugs in the process and eliminate them. If you do not have such resources, then perhaps you need to limit yourself to a very simple iterative process with the most simplified system of artifacts.

Not all team members must work in the ST conditions. For example, programmers and QA (at least up to the developer level) work in BW logic. Therefore, as a PM, you will have to rebuild and very often. It is necessary to form a clear working picture in my head when communicating with sales and tops using the SL, and then programmers will expand everything on the B & W lists. It works.

And one piece of advice - do not load programmers with SL problems in the form of stories about trolling and customer lies. This will only add negative karma to the process. Remember that lying and trolling is a normal human working environment. And your task is to protect the team from what it is still too early for it to know.

Well, okay, we understood what we think in the gray logic, what does it give us?

Here are some tips ...

1. Motivate people if you want to negotiate with them. A person stays in a project while it benefits him. Old arrangements, promises, rules - mean nothing - if a person has lost the motive to work or participate. And he will come up with 1,000 words in his own defense.

Motivation can be different - from salary to gain life experience. Just make sure that there is a real motive.

2. Do not try to talk to the interlocutor.

This will only cause a negative reaction and demotivation. A person instinctively understands that you are not interested in his motives.

3. Maintain documentation

To solve local problems, you will always find useful notes about the results of meetings, written answers to questions, praise to your team.

Sometimes it is useful to collect compromising material - for example, as a customer, 3 times changed some User History, etc.

Requirements collection artifacts are a prerequisite for working with complex customers. I do not believe in the survivability of processes that go without documentation. Words are just words ...

4. Value reputation. As long as you do not deceive and keep promises - the weight of your words grows. But the very first lie or failure to fulfill a promise sharply reduces the weight of your words. If the weight of words is constantly falling, then over time you are listened only out of politeness - and they do not change their perception of the question.

5. Recognize situations where someone has lost motivation.

It is very important to understand that someone is no longer interested in the project. For example, if a customer does not answer your question for 3 days - this is almost a 90% chance that the project will fail. The customer or his lawyers will find 10,000 words that will mean your irresponsibility and not fulfilling customer requirements.

6. Easier to treat words.

Often words are pronounced as some kind of hieroglyph or ritual. For example, when the top is wrong and “bumps” is not the case, he can mumble about the need to improve discipline for an hour, the importance of blabla blablably for blabla throughout blabla.

If you hear inadequate pathos - you can relax and think about something pleasant, for example, the beer festival in Bavaria ... while the RITUAL is on. You can sometimes poddaknut.

But, be on the alert - sometimes the interlocutor can hypnotize you and persuade you to support something concrete and important. An important sign is that, from the heights of demagogy, the ako falcon swoops on a specific topic - “by the way, how did you punish Petya for registering an account in Ukraine and was accidentally found by our customer?”. Now is the time to forget about the busty hawkers of beer and quickly and convincingly respond.

7. Listen to someone else's assessments - they can make yours more adequate.
If you have a detailed and clear picture about the project or solution, periodically discuss it with the developers. This will help not to fall behind the real situation.

Conclusion ... Star Wars theme plays.

I do not know if I have achieved any significant results in this post, but one thing I think I formulated is that human relations and communication are so complex that the processes we build and the tools we use are just tools of the Stone Age. It all depends on the people who are included in the process. As soon as one is not interested in the Process, he is finished (Process). And vice versa - while everyone is interested - the process is underway.

P.S. Software development and project management will never become a craft until we solve the civilizational problem of transferring complex gray logic constructs between people.

P.S.2. Perhaps gray logic is humanity? The ability to vary our assessments ... If we perceived the world and our ideas in the BW light - maybe we would have killed each other for a long time already.