In Stereo

During a chamber music performance a week or so ago I wondered why orchestras and musicians are positioned the way they are during a performance.

The obvious was pointed out to me by Meli, that the primary purpose of their positioning is for volume; softer instruments at the front and the louder instruments to the rear. Less obvious though, was another suggestion by a colleague, that it is a matter of convenience for the conductor, to enable line of sight.

What I’m concerned with though is whether or not the musicians are positioned in such a way as to stimulate the left (logical), and right (creative) hemispheres of the brain.

I noticed that generally, when the audience is facing the stage, the melodic instruments are usually placed to the left side and the rhythmic instruments to the right.

In this way, music which provides the rhythm, structure and mode of the piece enters primarily the right ear and stimulates the left and logical side of the brain.

Music which provides the melody and often the tension against the rhythm and structure enters the left ear and stimulates the right and creative side of the brain.

Honestly, I don’t know much about the science of this, a few Google searches didn’t really provide any evidence to support the idea that music is heard and interpreted this way.

None the less, orchestras have been arranged in this way for well over two hundred years. Surely there must be some evidence (and I’ll accept colloquial evidence) that there is some sense to this.

On Brand

I think when Steve leaves Cogent, he takes a large chunk of the brand with him. I’ve battled to try and create some understanding of what brand is within our company, but in this case, you never miss your water ‘till it’s gone.

“It” is all the cache and association that people make (particularly those people in the technology and development space) when they think of developers, coaches and team leaders who practice agile software development.

Much to my chagrin, Steve has not blogged under the Cogent banner. He has blogged under his own name (or the iridescent urchin). This means that the momentum and value that Steve brings to the discussion and discourse on agile and development process has a tertiary link to Cogent not a primary link if his writing was posted under our banner.

Worse still, there is an underlying belief that there is waste associated with setting up any form of blogging or content publishing on our own website. This further prevents us providing a platform to associate quality discourse and thinking about agile and development with the Cogent name in a primary sense.

To muddy waters further, we aggregate all of our team blog posts under a subdomain at blogs.cogentconsulting.com.au. In one sense this is an efficient way to gather those posts and “rebrand” them as Cogent, but it seems to lack some kind of authenticity to me.

For those who think this about image, you’re mistaken — it’s about the association people make in their minds between Cogent as an entity and agile software development as the service that we provide. This is about people, not Google search indexing, and while Google helps, it can also reveal inauthentic or ambiguous associations if they exist.

We’re pretty active on the tweeting front though. Yet, we have a CogentThoughts twitter account that one or two of us very, very rarely post to. We’re not actively celebrating our successes, nor are we advancing or agitating the discussion around agile software development using channels associated with our name.

It’s rather embarrassing to say this, but it’s been nearly ten years since I read The Clue Train Manifesto, yet the core theme still resonates with me; markets are conversations.

Some businesses converse visually (images, logos), others converse aurally (music, podcasts), others in a more meta-physical way such as the quality of service you had while engaging them or, the way they conduct themselves during business. Any way it happens, all of this contributes to the conversation that occurs between a business, the customers that engage it and the community that surrounds it.

The conversations we have with the people we do business with, the community, our colleagues and our peers all contributes to the association that people make with our name and the work that we do. And I believe that’s what brand is.

We at Cogent will need to consider how we start to pull all our activity and thinking together so that there is a primary association with our people, agile software development and Cogent Consulting.

Fit For Purpose

I was frustrated by an off-hand comment a colleague made today about a customer wanting to spend the least that they could to solve a problem; “they’re entitled to want spend the least amount they can to solve their problem”.

I find this kind of approach to solving business problems disingenuous.

I also drives me crazy when I hear customers say this, “Look, we don’t need the Rolls Royce version, we just need the Commodore version, just enough to get us on the road.”

Again, this analogy fails to capture the need to ensure that the solution is fit-for-purpose. Sure, we can get the customer on the road, but if they’re intending to take that ordinary sedan into the outback they’re going to find themselves severely wanting.

Time and time again, I find myself rallying against my colleagues (and unfortunately my customers) determined to make them see that the choice they’re making is not fit-for-purpose and will fall short of their expectations.

I appreciate the tension that exists between the budget a customer has and their highest expectations. I expect that customers are already compromising before they come to us for solutions. But I often fail to reconcile two things; why they often never tell us what their highest expectations are, and why they think they can get away with a cheap solution.

Consulting is not an easy business, in particular I find the implicit subservience unnerving. You can overcome this by committing to engage your customer as closely and regularly as you can. If your customer is disengaged from the software your developing for them, a disconnect can occur between the problems they experience in their business, the problems you perceive that exist in their business, the solutions you’re working on and the solutions that the customer imagines you’re working on.

If you commit to an ongoing dialogue about their intent, you’ll soon know if you’re building something that is fit-for-purpose, and they’ll know if they’re asking for something that isn’t. You’re also going to find yourself in a equitable relationship with your customer, hopefully avoiding the master and slave scenario we all dread.

What this takes though, is trust and honesty from both parties…plus a touch of courage and a dash of care on our part as developers.

On Purpose

People find all kinds of reasons to get up in the morning. They have an implicit understanding of the purpose of their lives - who they are, what they’re doing, where they’re going and who they’re doing it for. Or, they just don’t think about that stuff at all; some folk are just plain happy.

Every few years or so, I find myself feeling a little lost. Who am I? What am I doing? Where am I going? Who do I want to be? What do /I/ want to do?

While I’m getting a better handle on who I am. It’s just the other questions that I’m a little hazy on at the moment.

Of course, I can hear every pragmatic economic realist screaming: you work to support your family, to provide a safe and secure environment for your son to grow up in!. We’ll duh - of course, but part of that is determined by how happy and fulfilled I am in my work and life.

I’m very conscious of not crashing and burning out, suffering depression and loss of identity many years later. I don’t want to find myself having lived an unfulfilled life.

Having said that, that I feel this way every few years or so doesn’t necessarily make me any better at resolving these feelings or answering these questions. Yet I do take solace knowing that I do ask these questions. The unexamined life is not worth living.

With all that considered I’ve got Merlin Mann now screaming in my ears — first, care.

Problem I have at the moment is that I’ve been loudly proclaiming that I don’t care. I’ve been frustrated with the purpose of my work at the moment and haven’t felt close to the end product. References to software development being as part of a “line” don’t help. Nor do “backlogs”. This is the language of machinery and productivity, it’s not the language of creativity or connection with your work.

What’s especially wrong with this is that I do care about what I do and I part of my frustration is that I have found myself separated from the deterministic part of my work. I’m reduced to twiddling bits. And that really blows.

And now I tumble.

Because that’s how I roll.