Using Quality Software Management
QSM Brown Bag Breakfast Reading Group at Octo Technology
Emmanuel Gaillot <[email protected]>
-- or QSMBBB, as we call it.
Here's how it all started. After an interesting evening discussing Peopleware with the Parisian Extreme Programming group, someone (it's part of the myth nobody remembers who exactly threw the idea) suggested we should do the same with QSM. Only not just one evening, but week after week. My friend and colleague Bernard Notarianni fell in love with the idea and started a group at our company, Octo Technology. I had fallen in love with the idea, but I was convinced it would go nowhere -- predicting the group would go dry and die within a month. Yet that wasn't a reason why I shouldn't support Bernard's project, so we set up a group of volunteer workmates, and added few outside buddies who told us they were motivated. We didn't go dry. Week after week, the group has nurtured its core, feeling it with stories, quests and dreams. Before I knew it the group had celebrated its first year in business. At the end of volume 1, I had to admit -- we were having a blast, we were improving, the project was successful.
I decided to host a second group, starting back at the beginning of volume 1. After a quick poll on the company's mailing list, I had the certainty enough people were motivated to start a second group. The first one was meeting during lunch hours but I had no weekly lunch time left to offer for the second group. I proposed we met for a weekly breakfast instead, not too early so that we'd have some thoughts to share, not too late so that the company wouldn't feel we had created an economical drain. Eventually, we've decided to meet 2 hours every two weeks, Thu 9:00-11:00 AM. It's become a tradition that each session someone different brings croissants for the group. [This works exceptionally well in Paris. In New York, you might have to adapt and bring bagels: Jerry]
While a full participant in the first group, I act more as a host / facilitator for the second group. I make sure everyone remembers when the next session is coming (mailing list message + updated page on the company wiki). Everyone is expected to have read the current chapter and prepared the exercises. We use the two hours discussing what we've understood of the chapter -- this is the moment when we discuss our several French interpretations of the English text. I don't bring much content myself, merely making sure everyone wanting to talk gets a chance to share their thoughts. I also monitor the time, making sure we start and finish as decided. Often, I pick up from the discussions something very astute that I hadn't seen before. It may be a play on words, a diagram of effect, parallels with other situations, or just a new light shed on the text material that I'm now reading for the third time. When this happens and the group is ok to share it, I pass it on to the other group (the elder QSM BBL) and display it on our wiki page for the rest of the company.
We don't have a thought-out curriculum plan. As long as some people show up at the sessions, we go on. When we're done with one chapter, we move on to the next. We try to do all the exercises, except when we feel we should not. We're about to start chapter 7 of volume 1 next session.
Benefits are huge. I see every member of this reading group appropriating the vocabulary and using it in their work with others -- notion of value, of feedback, non-linearity of effects, etc. One member has decided to add a diagram of effects in a slide presentation one week after we'd done chapter 5. I start seeing participants realizing why it's important not to inflict help as consultants, what place they take in the systems they observe and try to change at their clients' workplace. For some interesting reasons that I don't fully grasp yet, I don't see much resistance from the rest of the company. Maybe it has to do with one idea being communicated by different people, with different words and ways of expression -- and able to strike different people with different ways of understanding.
Practices that I have found effective:
* Ask participants to invest something. It helps keeping assiduity high, in spite of other work demands. I've asked the participants to commit to come at every session, and to buy their own book. Money wasn't so much the concern here (since our company was ok to refund those who asked), spending the time getting in touch with Dorset House and actually ordering the book was. [This is probably easier in the USA: Jerry]
* Ask your managers to invest something. It helps keeping you focused, in spite of other work demands from your own manager. I fought to make sure managers knew and accepted at least two thirds of the session time would be during work hours.
* Have a facilitator. Have the facilitator not responsible for content, but for logistics. It greatly helps keeping the rest of the group focused on the discussed materials -- most of the time new in its concepts, and already distracting in itself.
* Remind participants of when they're expected to come, what they're expected to do. Everyone has a job, other constraints, other issues on their mind. It's natural for them to let aside the "homework." Gentle reminders halfway between two sessions keep everyone focused. Message gets more easily through if you're not afraid to repeat yourself, on different chanels (face-to-face, mail, intranet, etc.)
* Don't discuss about general ideas, don't speculate. The more you can root the discussions and the exercises on real experience, the more it becomes interesting and useful for everyone.
* Just try and do it. Trust the process and keep a context in which everyone may learn from others -- not just you the organizer. It removes some pressure from your shoulders, it brings some diversity to what's to be learnt. I've found that most people were eager to bring something into the group once someone was officially taking care of the boring stuff -- reminders, room booking, mailing list maintenance, etc. -- and once in a while, I could even ask them to take care of the boring stuff as well :^)
Watch this space as the list grows.
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