In search of intelligent life in a court rooms and business analysis

Posted on the July 15th, 2009 under Great Applications by Gregory Yankelovich

moron At the root of any great software application is a great partnership between process domain experts and talented technologists of Business Analysis persuasion. People who are willing and capable to create and pursue honest and intelligent inquiry. Unfortunately these efforts are too often reminiscent of the following quotes: 

Disorder in the American Courts

These  are from a book called Disorder in the American Courts, and  are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken  down and now published by court reporters that had the torment  of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking  place.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS:  Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
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ATTORNEY:  Are you sexually active?
WITNESS:  No, I just lie there.
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ATTORNEY:  This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at  all?
WITNESS:  Yes.
ATTORNEY:  And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS:  I forget.
ATTORNEY:  You forget? Can you give us an example of something you  forgot?
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ATTORNEY:  Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his  sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next  morning?
WITNESS:  Did you actually pass the bar exam?
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ATTORNEY:  The youngest son, the twenty-year-old, how old is  he?
WITNESS:  He’s twenty, much like your IQ.
___________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS:  Are you kidding me?
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ATTORNEY:  So the date of conception (of the baby) was August  8th?
WITNESS:  Yes.
ATTORNEY:  And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS:  getting laid
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  She had three children, right?
WITNESS:  Yes.
ATTORNEY:  How many were boys?
WITNESS:  None.
ATTORNEY:  Were there any girls?
W  ITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I  get a new attorney?
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ATTORNEY:  How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS:  By death.
ATTORNEY:  And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS:  Take a guess.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS:  He was about medium height and had a beard.
ATTORNEY:  Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS:  Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
_____________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a  deposition notice  which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS:  No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on  deadpeople?
WITNESS:  All of them. The live ones put up too much of a  fight.
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ATTORNEY:  ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go  to?
WITNESS:  Oral.
_________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS:  The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m.
ATTORNEY:  And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS:  If not, he was by the time I finished.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY:  Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS:  Are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
And  the best for last:
ATTORNEY:  Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a  pulse?
WITNESS:  No.
ATTORNEY:  Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS:  No.
ATTORNEY:  Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS:  No.
ATTORNEY:  So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you  began the autopsy?
WITNESS:  No.
ATTORNEY:  How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS:  Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY:  I see, but could the patient have still been alive,  nevertheless?
WITNESS:  Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and  practicing  law

Musings on business of software

Posted on the April 14th, 2009 under Business Risk, Great Applications by Gregory Yankelovich

images It is written a lot about a low cost of entry into a “knowledge” business nowadays, and it is true since fledgling entrepreneurs do not need to invest millions of dollars into infrastructure (thanks to Cloud computing) or software licenses for tooling (thanks to Open Source). However the complexity of bringing to the market new software product, that enough people want to use to make the effort sustainable, has become much higher as well. 

Joel Spolsky of the Fog Creek Software, wrote an excellent post

Software is a conversation, between the software developer and the user. But for that conversation to happen requires a lot of work beyond the software development. It takes marketing, yes, but also sales, and public relations, and an office, and a network, and infrastructure, and air conditioning in the office, and customer service, and accounting, and a bunch of other support tasks.

Your first priority as the manager of a software team is building the development abstraction layer.

Funding this layer is also extremely difficult for a startup company, particularly if you are not trying yet another iteration of something that a VC have funded before. So a developer is squeezed between investors expectations of much lower cost of innovation, and public’s expectation of free software or content, if it is delivered via Internet.  As a result every member of the startup team ends up wearing multiple hats and this development abstraction layer does not exist at all.

Management’s primary responsibility to create the illusion that a software company can be run by writing code, because that’s what programmers do. And while it would be great to have programmers who are also great at sales, graphic design, system administration, and cooking, it’s unrealistic. Like teaching a pig to sing, it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.

So the interesting question is how does the magic of bootstrapped startup actually work? How does a pig learns to sing and what is the motivation?

I suspect that very same level of abstraction, Joel described in his post, also provides unintended side effects of alienation and a lack of purpose, that motivate some software developers to become “singing pigs”, and shake off the strings attached to their “free” lunches.

Late Sir Peter Blake said “If you are not living on the edge, you are taking too much space”.