Comments on: Need Help with a Phrase

By: Doug Hislop

Doug Hislop — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 00:56:56 +0000

Johanna - A couple of the suggestions so far are quite good, but the first one that can to mind for me was “mental wheel spinning”. There is a connectability with the wheels of the mind and the spinning of the wheels on a car. The spinning of car tires will often move a vehicle forwards, but usually in a very inefficient way.

By: Erick Herring

Erick Herring — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 03:03:28 +0000

From: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/10/egomania-itself.html and somewhat on point.
“The Break-Dancing Chicken
Oh yeah. First I have to tell you about the chicken. We’ve done the cats, we’ve done the chili, we’re on to the chicken. Almost ready for the final act, which is really gonna piss a lot of people off, I can tell you that right now.
In 1986, my college Psychology 101 professor told us a little story about her Abnormal Psych class from the previous year. The students each got a lab rat, and they had to train their rats to run through mazes by rewarding the rats for exhibiting properly ratty maze behavior. But there was one girl who was terrified of rats, so they gave her a chicken, and she trained it to play the piano by pecking notes with its beak. Each time the chicken played the right notes, she’d give it a pellet (or whatever the hell chickens eat). Wrong notes, no pellet. She’d teach it one new note at a time, and eventually it would know the whole song.
At one point, after she’d coaxed the chicken to learn maybe half its song, the chicken made a violent side-to-side motion just before playing exactly the right sequence of notes, including the new note she was trying to teach it. It had played the right notes, so she had to give it a pellet. The chicken had definitely figured out that doing what she wanted would get it yummy pellets. After that last pellet, it decided that it had been rewarded for both the note and the motion, and from then on, it made crazy twisting motions continuously as it played. She had to keep rewarding it when it played the right notes, and she had no good way of informing it that the twisting was unnecessary (not without starting over, and there wasn’t time). So the chicken went on happily believing that thrashing violently was helping its project succeed.
They eventually went on tour to the local colleges with it, billing it as “The Break-Dancing, Piano-Playing Chicken”.
Our prof told us wide-eyed freshmen that this phenomenon is called superstition, and it refers to the exact same kind of superstition you think of when someone mentions black cats, walking under ladders, breaking mirrors, opening umbrellas indoors, and so on. ‘Superstition’ is any belief not based on scientific experiment or pure deductive reasoning. (More or less.)”

By: Rich Stone

Rich Stone — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 20:58:03 +0000

Johanna - There are many things that project teams do that do not directly contribute to delivery velocity.
Click the Homepage link to see my post about this (trackback failed) repeatedly…

By: James Ward

James Ward — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:09:07 +0000

Johanna,upon reading your query I thought about many “make work” or “non-value added” activities that project managers and team members are often asked to perform by managers, auditors, customers and others. These tasks are usually performed to satisfy someone’s view of “process,” where the process itself may have some value, or had value at a prior time, but achieving certain results seems less important than performing the specified process steps. Being required to fill out all the fields on a form, for instance, when the real value can be gained by completing only a small percentage of fields.
However, I do not consider your example of estimating without feedback to be a non-value add task. The very process of estimating, particularly if done in conjunction with the person(s) who will actually be performing the tasks being estimated, solidifies understanding of the task and the resources needed to perform them. I have often uncovered considerable misunderstanding about expectations based on widely divergent estimates of the same task.
I will acknowledge that estimating without feedback is far from optimal, and makes little sense, but the estimating itself is not wasted effort, regardless of whether feedback is ever obtained.
I am anxious to see your book. It seems that I’ve read dozens of books on this topic, but your insights are always new and thought provoking.

By: Devon

Devon — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 23:49:23 +0000

I’ll have “mental masturbation” for one thousand. It has the potential of catching most people’s attention.

By: Erick Herring

Erick Herring — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 14:03:35 +0000

If I understand the scenario, it feels like a case of “monkey see, monkey do” or imitation without understanding.
There is also, I think, a cargo cult aspect to such behavior - the PM in question has seen this done by a purportedly successful colleague, therefore they feel obliged to do it, too.
One of my favorite quotes might be (tangentially) appropriate: “Strategy without tactics is a slow road to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” - Sun Tzu (of course)

By: Dominic Cronin

Dominic Cronin — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 02:31:12 +0000

I’m with Walter. Estimation without feedback is not necessarily a wasted activity. Johanna, could you possibly come up with some clearer examples of what you mean?
Is it about thinking you are doing something which you aren’t? Or simply doing non-productive things?
Or doing things which are productive but not to the project. (e.g. studying a cool new technology and hiding it within the project budget)
Sudoku exercises the brain and makes you less flabby. Sudoku may even improve your ability as a programmer or as a project manager. (Any psychologists looking for a PhD thesis?) That isn’t what you meant though, is it?
I think you are right to be chary of references to masturbation, as the metaphor is likely to distract from the message for some people.
I suspect that if you can clarify the question, you might not need help with the answer. How about two or three examples that don’t mention estimation?

By: Walter Underwood

Walter Underwood — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:06:44 +0000

“Wanking” is more fun to say than “masturbation”, but I think this is the wrong tack.
A one-shot estimate is useful and there can be lasting effect (you could cancel the project!), but if it is never reality-checked, you don’t learn. So this is work without learning. Decide up front if this is going to be an unchecked, one-shot estimate. Maybe that is the right thing.
A friend (Ian Thomas) used to quote someone else (whose name I can’t remember) as saying, “Progress is a reduction in the amount of work left to be done.” There are lots of ways to make progress, like removing features, or learning. Sometimes, a one-shot estimate is part of that. But if the effort does not reduce the amount of work left to be done, then it is wasted time and is preventing progress by diverting effort from something that would cause progress.

By: Jared

Jared — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 08:02:27 +0000

How about Trendmilling? Trying every new thing without ever getting anywhere?

By: Marc Rene

Marc Rene — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 06:34:04 +0000

Hey Johanna,
how about “Project Management Boondoggles”