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I first read “A Community of Thinkers” that Liz, Jean and Eric published late last year. I remember thinking that I felt strongly aligned to it, yet slightly uncomfortable with the exact wording. I toyed around with some words and now, a couple of months later, I am much more comfortable with a slightly abridged version.

It isn’t enough to be a member of a community of thinkers. We can philosophise and think ourselves to death. The world continues to operate in complex ways (yes, as in this, and this sort of complexity). It is not enough to sit back and only think. We need to experiment. We need to apply. We need to practise, then reflect and feed those learnings back into our thinking. This is the essence I respect the most about certain people in the agile community. This is what I want to keep alive. Remind yourself the Do is an important part of PDCA just as much as Check (Reflect) is.

For me, I am not just a member of a community of thinkers. I am a member of a community of thinking practitioners. If you’re not practicing and actively thinking, you’re not part of my community.

A Community of Thinking Practitioners
I am a member of a community of thinking practitioners.

I believe that communities exist as homes for professionals to learn, teach, and reflect on their work.

I challenge each community in the software industry to:

• reflect and honor respect the practitioners who make its existence possible;
• provide an excellent experience for its members;
• support the excellent experience its members provide for their clients and colleagues in all aspects of their professional interactions;
• exemplify, as a body, the professional and humane behavior of its members;
• engage and collaborate within and across communities through respectful exploration of diverse and divergent insights;
• embrace newcomers to the community openly and to celebrate ongoing journeys; and
• thrive on the sustained health of the community and its members through continual practice, reflection and improvement.

I believe that leaders in each community have a responsibility to exhibit these behaviors, and that people who exhibit these behaviors will become leaders.

I am a member of a community of thinking practitioners. If I should happen to be a catalyst more than others, I consider that a tribute to those who have inspired me.

This one is based upon the original posted on Liz Keogh’s blog here. This licensed under the Share Alike Creative Commons License. All modifications/addendums I made are emphasised in italics.

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A few weeks back, Andy and I got together to walk through all the different iPhone examples that we’ve been playing around with. We both learned a great deal.

I’ve found that teaching whilst learning is actually the most effective way of learning. There’s something about trying to put words to the things that you think you know that makes you reason actually how little you really know.

I think the best learning model where this experience fits in is the following model:

Unconscious Incompetence -> Conscious Incompetence -> Conscious Competence -> Unconscious Competence

The act of trying to explain something is trying to raise you from one level to the next. If, for instance, you think you know what you’re doing and then find yourself having difficulty explaining something, you’re perhaps you are at a stage of Unconscious Incompetence. However if you know you are already incompetence (Conscious Incompetence), then the act of explaining is helping your understanding, testing the boundaries of where your knowledge fails. You are trying to move from Conscious Incompetence to Conscious Competence.

Interestingly, articulating your competence (or lack of) is an integral part to both a software craftsmanship model and pair programming, where in both you are expected to articulate your reasoning. The benefits work at all sorts of levels including the novice-novice and even the expert-novice pairing arrangement.

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Last year, I ran a workshop at XP2009 and Agile 2009, helping people map behaviours to the different levels in the Dreyfus Model. Being a workshop for only 90 minutes, we only had time to introduce the model, generate a set of behaviours mapping them to each level in the model and only a small fraction of time thinking about where this might be useful in a coach’s toolbox.

I tend to use it as a way of encouraging people to self-assess their own behaviours, and as a way of seeing concrete, specific sets of behaviours that people in more advanced stages might find themselves.

We didn’t really get an opportunity to discuss the limitations of using the model in this way (remembering that all models are inherently limited in some manner).

Most useful for Novices
Ironically enough, this set of behaviours mapped in this way is only most useful to those who still remain Novices and less so, the Advanced Beginner. Novices need concrete rules, and directions. Advanced Beginners start to see context, yet it’s often helpful being specific about what sets of behaviours you might see at different stages.

Ironically, as you progress, using the Dreyfus Model in this way becomes less useful as you progress. I like to introduce this set of behaviours after people have had some experience with a certain practice. It helps people answer the question, “What does good look like?”

It’s not an exhaustive list
When I’ve run these workshops with other coaches, I find it interesting to see how they notice different sets of behaviours from what I would observe. Even when looking at a single practice, you have a multitude of behaviours at lots of different levels. It’s preciseness at describing specific sets of behaviour also has the risk of people only focusing on the prescribed behaviours instead of thinking about the sorts of behaviour that sits at this level.

I can’t imagine trying to list every single set of behaviour. As interesting as that might be, I think it would be impossible to capture, and difficult to communicate succinctly.

Best for personal development, not as performance evaluation criteria
It’s easy for managers to see a list of different levels, and then attempt of fit people into a box for performance evaluation. As much as their intention might be good good (professional growth) I think it’s easy to game.

I like to emphasise that this model is best used as a way for coach’s to help people self-assess, and for people to set their own goals about where they want to be.

Not the only tool to use
I like using this tool as a transitional tool, helping people jump the gap from Novice to Advanced Beginner and from Advanced Beginner to Competent. Beyond that, I would use less of this tool and look at other tools that help people self discover their information.

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Andy wrote a great blog post trying to relate Shu Ha Ri to the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition. When I posted my thoughts, he suggested I blog about my story, so here it is.

In it’s simplest form, Shu -> Ha -> Ri roughly translates to Follow -> Detach -> Transcend. When I think back to the days when I studied Aikido (where I believe these concepts originate), I considered Shu Ha Ri as the flow of energy, or where you focus the majority of your efforts.

Photo of energy taken from HocusFocusClick’s Flickr stream under the creative commons licence

A Shu person, for example, focuses their energy on simply executing a very basic move. They repeat the kata, over and over, with the weight of their conscious mostly on thinking, “I move my arm up to block”.

The Ha person, no longer follows the rote kata, “detaching” from the original conscious thought, now focused on its application. They spend their time thinking, “An arm is coming my way, I better block”.

The Ri person is certainly spectacular to witness with energy flowing from move to move, something the dojo sensei demonstrated during a yearly open house. During this event, lasting a good twenty minutes, five black belt students attacked the sensei from all sides. They attacked with their hands and a small assortment of weapons. The sensei defended by turning, locking and throwing each student back in return. What I still remember vividly was comparing the black belts, completely drenched to the skin in sweat, to the sensei, who barely showed any signs of sweat.

I see this same flow of energy and focus of effort when watching people learn development skills. At one end of the spectrum, the Shu developer spends an enormous effort thinking about how to execute a particular practice. At the other end of the spectrum, the right practices occur and great quality code (and tests) appear.

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As I gather more experience (i.e. get older) I’ve discovered every model has a breaking point. What does that mean and why should you care? Accepting that models break is the first step to understanding and identifying their limitations. More importantly, because models have a breaking point, you should be actively discovering other models that help you better communicate and grasp new concepts.

Sounds easy right? Unfortunately my experience in life proves the opposite with most people wanting to only hold a single “valid” model that manages to explain and justify everything. I see this as a consequence of western education guided by Socratic thought and a Platonic ideal but that is a post for another time. In real life, this desire to hold onto “one valid model” translates to arguments over the merits of a particular model and often the basis for justifying a position. Note that I have no problems arguing for the sake of testing and discovering the boundaries of a particular model.

What do you do about it?

Accept that models are simplifications of sometimes complicated, sometimes complex systems. Be open to exploring the boundaries of a particular model, uncovering where one model excels at explaining certain characteristics of a system. Seek out and invent new models that provide a different point of view, or that emphasise and highlight different aspects for that system.

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One of the biggest differentiators between the users who prefer IntelliJ over Eclipse is often their dedication to learning keyboard shortcuts. The user-conscious designers of IntelliJ make as much as they can consistent, something much more difficult for Eclipse, who is dependent on a community for plugin development without any process for reviewing how well they all fit together.

On my very first ThoughtWorks project, I remember my pair commenting about how I should learn all the keyboard shortcuts for IntelliJ. Learning keyboard shortcuts is less about churning out great amounts of code, and much more about avoiding interrupting your flow. Simple actions, such as reaching for mouse have potential to break your flow. Jetbrains make it easy to learn the keyboard shortcuts, even providing a printable cheat sheet so you can put them around your workspace as you learn them.

Having said all of this, here are some of the keyboard shortcuts I find myself using all the time for iPhone development:

• Switch to Header/Source File- ALT + CMD + UpArrow
• Open quickly – Shift + CMD + D. This is as close to Jump to Class/Method/Symbol that I could find so far. I haven’t worked out how to search using regular expressions yet.
• Go back/forward – ALT + CMD + LeftArrow/RightArrow. Moves back between files that you opened. Useful for cycling through a call stack
• Go(Run) – CMD + Enter. I’m currently using this to quickly see results as a spike my way through learning about Objective C and the APIs
• Open Console – SHIFT + CMD + R. Useful when debugging using log statements and looking at what’s going on.

I’ve also found application-wide standard keyboard shortcuts really helpful as well

• Cycle through different applications (XCode, Interface Builder) – CMD + TAB
• Cycle through different windows in the same application – CMD + ` or CMD + ~. These are all really useful because Apple applications have a tendency to open many many windows, not really ideal for keyboard use.
• Open help – SHIFT + CMD + ?. This is really useful when no keyboard shortcut is mapped, or you want to access a menu and can’t remember what it was. Once you have the Help dialogue open, start typing the name of the menu item. I’ve used this quite a lot to access the Refactor menu item which pops open another window.

Of course there are many more keyboard shortcuts. These are simply the ones that I’ve found I’m getting the most productivity. I wouldn’t say all of development can driven through the keyboard alone, but it’s a pretty good start for now. What are your favourite ones?

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I’m a huge believer in accepting multiple models as different ways of looking at the same set of data. It’s just simply different glasses to see different things through. One of the glasses I’ve been putting on more consciously is that of David Kolb and his model on experience learning. Read more about it here.

It follows a simple cycle: Experiencing -> Reflecting -> Generalising -> Applying -> (Back to Beginning)

Here’s how I go about applying it. I follow one of the wonderful tutorials from Apple on their iPhone development, focused on simply trying to step through the cycle and get some visible success (Experiencing). I then spend some time thinking about what new tidbit of information I’ve learned (Reflecting) and trying to come up with some way of fitting it my general mental model of how it works (Generalising). I then try it out on my prototype application to see if I truly understood it (Applying).

Having read about the model a while ago, I think there are a few key things to focus on when using this model:

• Keep it small – I could choose to run through all of the different Apple iPhone tutorials one after the other. This doesn’t give me any chance of reflecting, generalising or applying the material. Given my very forgetful nature, working with one tutorial at a time through this cycle is important. I try to keep this cycle in terms of a couple of hours, not a couple of days. Attempt to pick up knowledge incrementally.
• Rinse and repeat – Going through this cycle one doesn’t guarantee you’ll actually learn everything, or even anything. I’ve found I got to the end of doing something and didn’t have any general model. Iterating lets you mine and discover new lessons. I repeat the same exercise, and as I do, I notice I pick up different things.

Interesting it is these two aspects, incrementing and iterating that is at the heart of working in an agile manner. Notice how it’s all about learning then?

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I’m a big fan of XP’s practice of spiking solutions. Although I’m not currently doing TDD because I barely know enough about iPhone development to make myself dangerous, I haven’t quite dropped all practices. I still use source control (just a local SVN repository) against the root of my spikes directory.

Here’s how I’ve been structuring myself:

The benefits of this let’s me quickly create new projects to learn a single lesson given the numerous tutorials out there, and then put that under source control for reference code at a later stage. I then spend some time integrating it into the MyPrototypeProject, making small incremental commits as I make progress. The best part is that if I make a mistake along the way, all I have to do is a svn revert -R . to get back to a working state if I get too frustrated or lost.

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Late last week, Andy Yates got me onto the whole Hello World application for the iPhone. Since then, I’ve been dabbling around a bit more trying to get my head around it. After having studied how people learn things using models such as Shu Ha Ri, the Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition, and Kolb’s learning cycle, it’s fascinating to try to understand how best to pick it up.

Here are some observations that I’ve made so far:

• There are many different dimensions to learning how to write an iPhone application. First, there is the fact that it’s written in Objective C, so you’re learning about the syntax and intricacies of a new language. Secondly, you are learning new development tools including XCode and Interface Builder. Thirdly you are learning about the libraries, documentation, and understanding how things fit together.
• I intentionally recognise myself as being at Shu level (in Shu Ha Ri) or a Novice (on the Dreyfus Model). This means that I want to have some quick wins, get stuff working and worry about how it all fits together in the next stage. I’ve found that repeating the same exercise (almost like a kata) has helped me understand how things relate to each other just that little bit more.
• Writing a journal helps. I intend on blogging about some things that I’m discovering. It might help one person out but it will sure help me articulate clearly my understanding (or lack of understanding) about the topics that I’m finding. When I don’t blog, I’ve got a little text file with snippets on what things I’ve discovered and what things still puzzle me. It’s helping me organise the random things that I’ve got.
• Interestingly, I’m less interested in following some of the practices I would if writing a production application. This means I’m not worrying too much about refactoring or testing until I get the basics down. I don’t want to confuse the concerns of exploration and learning with verifying the system works (which I can barely get going right now). When I am more confident in my knowledge, I’ll definitely spend more time thinking about these things.

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I’m a self confessed keyboard-junkie and avoid using the mouse to do most things. Being new to a mac environment, it’s not necessarily clear how to get some of the usual things done. Inspired by the tip that Thomas wrote here, I figured it’d be worth sharing how I’m navigating my way around. Please leave a comment sharing your favourites!

Enable tabbing to all fields in webforms
The mac apparently wants to make it difficult by default to enter in web forms using a keyboard. Turn on the Full keyboard access option to All Controls. Use the dialog following System Preferences => Keyboard & Mouse => Keyboard Shortcuts page.

Equivalent of accelerator or access keys
Most windows applications provide underlined characters so you can access them with the ALT+<letter> key. In this manner, you can access all items without having to click the mouse.
Mac equivalent: The most effective way I’ve found so far is to use the Help (CMD+SHIFT+?) and then type in the label of the menu item. Use the up and down arrows and enter to select. Note that this isn’t guaranteed to work in all applications (like Firefox opening a help page instead)

Closing windows
Fortunately the CTRL-W option that would close applications maps directly to CMD+W although unlike windows, closing the last windows doesn’t automatically shutdown the application. CMD+Q will do the trick instead.

Opening finder
On windows, I’d use the Windows+E button to open up a new version of windows explorer to look at files. There seems to be a few ways to do this. If you have quicksilver installed, open quicksilver and then start typing Finder. If you’re using spotlight, start typing a file you know exists and then hit CMD+R (reveal in finder).

Unlike windows explorer, finder won’t necessarily always start from the root directory. Use the keyboard shortcuts CMD+SHIFT+H to start from home context or CMD+SHIFT+C to start from the computer context (useful if navigating to network drives).

Scrolling through windows of the same application
Use the CMD+` (backquote) to do so. Use CMD+~ (tilde) to go the other way (or CMD+SHIFT+`)

Show Desktop
On windows, I would use the WIN+M to minimise all windows. On the mac, you can use F5 if you don’t map those keys to normal functions (such as volume control) or if you turn on Expose, you can use F11 to hide all.

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