The Value of Adapter Philosophies for Iterative Change
One saying i really like is: Only Say Things That Can be Heard
What this means is that everyone and every organization is in a
different place in their lives. If you show up at a company and tell
them everything they do stinks then you won't be heard. You will just
make enemies and nothing will get done as everyone sharpens their fangs
for the next fight. You get the same result when "talking" with your
family too :-) Somehow you must find a way to talk to someone in a way
that makes sense to them.
I must admit this is a hard bit of wisdom for me to take out in the
real world. I tend to be too direct at times. I remember one particular
meeting where I realized just how destructive the direct only the facts
matter approach can be. In this meeting from hell this one particular
ubergeek was coming hard and fast. He was questioning everything. He
was disagreeing with everything. He was saying everything I wanted to
do wasn't going to work because it didn't work when he did it at
company X. He wasn't giving an inch on anything. And he was doing it
all with that infuriating "I am just trying to understand" attitude. In
short, it was like looking at me at my worst.
Now I don't much like looking in the mirror anyway, but when that's
what I see staring back I want to banish all mirrors, just like they
did in the movie The Skeleton Key.
At that time I made a solid pledge to change may ways and try to Only
Say Things That Can be Heard. Am I 100% successful? Unfortunately, no.
But I am much better now. Through my career I have consistently
witnessed this same movie replayed, only with different actors and a
new sound track. Software is only partly technical. Building software
is mostly social.
I was reminded of this again when an issue came up on the scrum emailing list about trying to make the
Capability Maturity Model for Software (CMM) more agile. A team from
Microsoft had done a lot of good work on trying to make CMM more agile.
CMM is very popular, especially at large organizations, and is
decidedly anti-agile in practice. If a way could be found to make CMM
more agile, then that would be a good thing, or would it? Someone asked
why it mattered. Let agile people go on their own way. Sure, these
companies would be better off if they were more agile, but since
they've chosen to use CMM they'll get what they deserve. Who cares?
This reminded me of Only Say Things That Can be Heard.
In software design there's a pattern called the adapter pattern. The
adapter pattern converts the interface of one class into another
interface clients expect. It brings unlike things together through an
intermediate wrapper.
One good example is the WindowAdapter class in the Java API. WindowAdapter implements the
Windowlistener interface, which has seven methods. When you inherit from
Windowlistener, you have to implement all seven methods, even if you
only want to use one of them. That's where the WindowAdapter class
comes in. It implements all the methods with a default behaviour so you
only have to implement the methods you need.
public interface Windowlistener {
public void windowClosed(WindowEvent e);
public void windowOpened(WindowEvent e);
public void windowIconified(WindowEvent e);
public void windowDeiconified(WindowEvent e);
public void windowActivated(WindowEvent e);
public void windowDeactivated(WindowEvent e);
public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e);
}
public class WindowAdapter implements WindowListner{
public void windowClosed(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowOpened(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowIconified(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowDeiconified(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowActivated(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowDeactivated(WindowEvent e){}
public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e){}
}
WindowAdapter can be used anywhere Windowlistener can be used, but
you only have to pay attention to the parts you need to "hear" at the
time. It makes listener classes easier and more convenient to create.
It makes the original listener class acceptable to a broader audience.
You may think the WindownAdapter class is silly and useless, but it
helps people accept the more complicated Windowlistener interface.
Later, when they are ready, maybe they'll need the more complete
interface. Or maybe they never will.
We don't just have adapter classes, we also have adapter philosophies.
What the team at Microsoft is doing is creating an adapter philosophy
that makes the ideas of agile acceptable within CMM. Without this
effort there would never be a change. People don't change when you
attack them or give them something completely and totally alien
to their experience.
We see adapter philosophies in history too. One interesting example
is the spread of buddhism from india to china.
Buddhism,
which started in india, found it very difficult to spread into china
because traditional chinese thought
was so different. Buddhism believes in reincarnation, for example, while
traditional chinese beliefs emphasize
ancestor worship. There are many other similar examples.
Then how did buddhism spread into china? What happened was taoism
became an adapter philosophy between the two sides. Taoism is rooted in
the oldest belief systems of china, so it was well known and well
accepted by the chinese. Because buddhism
could be partially understood using taoist ideas, buddhism got the toe
hold it needed. Eventually
the buddhist ideas could be accepted and understood on their own
without the taoist wrapper, but it took time. Radical change on a mass
scale was unlikely to happen, especially given the non-violent ethos of
buddhists. Through the use of an adapter philosophy it was possible to
change iteratively, one small step at a time.
The opposite happened in japan. Shinto, which was once the state religion of japan, was well aligned with the chang
buddhism that made its way into japan. Chang buddhism found a ready
audience for what later became zen.
Interestingly, the chinese strains of buddhism remained
characteristically chinese. The same in japan, nepal, and thailand, and
everywhere else ideas spread. Adoption is rarely total, it's more a
process of mutual adaptation, like breaking in a new shoe. Both your
feet and the shoes give a little. If the shoes never become
comfortable, you end up finding a new pair.
It just might be that the combination
of CMM and agile might be better for many solution spaces than either
alone would be.
If you are interested in agile ways spreading, it may be a good idea to
encourage adapter
philosophies. People often need a partial metaphor which supports their
working simultaneously in their old world and their new world. Not
everyone makes the jump directly into becoming
a true believer, nor would you want them to.
The fact that most buddhists were later purged from china should not be
a concern :-)
3:48:47 PM 
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