Mans.hu

Of life and all its colors

About everything that amazes and confounds me.

About / Blog / Contact

Categories

Book Review: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time

by Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading Jeff Sutherland’s – Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, and thoroughly enjoyed it and can recommend it to anyone interested in Agile and Scrum. I have been doing Agile and Scrum since 2011, so I like to think that I have a fair bit of experience in the ceremonies, and practical aspects of Agile, but the book was a great read on the history of how Agile came into being, and the philosophy behind these ceremonies, and a deeper look at the why not the how of Agile and Scrum.

51A1BpQ2HjL._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_

I have already written a post on how why Scrum is called Scrum based on what I learned from this book, and there were several other things like this that I learned from the book such as Jeff Sutherland’s efforts to modernize the FBI’s database, and his experience with Japanese car manufacturers, and how that led to the role of the Product Owner being created in Scrum.

The philosophy and history behind each of the Agile ceremonies, principles, roles, and the problems that these were solving were the biggest takeaway for me from this book.

Also, at a high level, I think it is very useful to hear from Jeff Sutherland as to why Agile is so much faster than traditional waterfall development, and understand how it is the agility of teams that leads to faster development, not an individual coding 4x faster.

Personally, I feel that 4x productivity is probably not true for most teams, and while it is a good goal to aspire to I don’t think that a lot of projects were really done in 25% of the cost in a very conventional sense. I feel that Agile eliminates waste in terms of building something that no one wants, and to that extent maybe that 4x productivity number is correct, but this is really my only gripe with the book.

All in all, I think this is a very good read, and also a very easy read that you can finish in a couple of sittings, and one which everyone who’s dabbling in Agile or Scrum should invest time in.

How to memorize the co-ordinates of a chess board and remember the color of every square?

by Leave a Comment

I’ve always had a terrible memory, so I never really expected to be able to memorize the co-ordinates of the chess board properly, and never imagined that one day not only would be I be able to memorize the co-ordinates – I will also be able to remember the color of each square!

Till recently, I didn’t even consider this very important, and it was only until I hit a road block in the difficulty level of puzzles that I could solve did I realize that I need this skill to improve further.

Why should you memorize the co-ordinates of the chess board?

In order to calculate and hold several positions in your head you need to be able to see your desired position in your mind’s eye. Knowing the co-ordinates and the color of the square helps this process immensely. I would go as far as to say that beyond a certain level you can’t improve in tactics if you don’t have the squares memorized. They provide an anchor in your mind to navigate the sequence of moves, and without this you won’t be able to retain two or three variations in your head which are essential in an actual game.

Knowing the color of each square will help you in your memorization by a factor of at least ten because if you know that e4 is always white then you’ll never look at a square and wonder if this is e4 or d4. My own calculations were greatly improved after I learned the co-ordinates and colors, and my method to memorize this was quite natural, so it didn’t ever seem like a chore to me beyond the normal effort required to learn anything new.

How to memorize the color of each square?

There is research that shows that it is easier to remember that someone is a baker than it is to remember that their name is Mr. Baker. This is because your mind has certain associations with a baker and it holds some meaning for you whereas a name is a meaningless label.

This was the starting point in my attempt to memorize the colors of the squares. I had to give a meaning to every square, and while that may be impractical I was very easily able to give meaning to c4. I am an English player, and always open with c4 which I know to be a white square. This is easy enough to remember.

Screenshot 2019-07-04 at 5.12.50 PM

Due to the symmetry of the board I know that if c4 is white then c2, c6, and c8 should also be white. So, great – all even numbers in the c file are white. Now, look at the board closely – you will see that this is true for every alternate file to c. So, the a, c, e and g files all share this characteristic.

For a couple of weeks I used to think in my head that aceg even is white when it hit me that aceg is an anagram for CAGE. 

This was a breakthrough moment for me as remembering CAGE EVEN IS WHITE is the easiest thing in the world. This combination of a mnemonic and a meaningful pattern quickly enabled me to identify all the CAGE square colors instantly. It took about a week’s practice to internalize this and after this it was only natural to transpose this, and say OTHER ODD IS WHITE. Another week or so of practice made me remember this but I have to admit I haven’t internalized this as much as I have the CAGE squares. At this point, it needs some more practice but I’m getting there.

How to memorize the co-ordinates of the chess board?

Once you memorize the colors – the co-ordinates become very easy. My technique is to solve a puzzle, and then close my eyes, and solve it in my head voicing the co-ordinates. I also voice the co-ordinates while watching any chess Youtube videos or when I’m reading any chess books.

The most impactful method by far is to close my eyes, and solve a puzzle in my head. Often I will solve a puzzle, and then solve it again in my head with the co-ordinates. You will be surprised to see that quite often not only can you not solve a solved puzzle you can’t even remember which color you were!

So, obviously practising this muscle helps the skill tremendously, and overall helps your tactics and your results. So, I’d recommend following my method and process and seeing if it helps you memorizing the co-ordinates and colors as well!

Why is Scrum called Scrum?

by Leave a Comment

I worked in Belgium for about an year or so, and that is where I saw my first rugby game. It was in a bar full of english and french fans, and during the game a friend of mine asked me why the term scrum was used in agile. In rugby, scrum refers to the locking of heads between two teams where each one is trying to stop the other from making progress; this is what it looks like for those of you who don’t know what he was talking about.

ST_vs_Gloucester_-_Match_-_23

Source: PierreSelim

As you may well imagine – this is the opposite of what you want to achieve with Agile. This question was posed to me a few years ago, and until recently I didn’t know the right answer to it.  

That changed when I started reading Jeff Sutherland’s – Scrum – The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time.

The book itself is excellent, and I highly recommend it, and also, since Jeff Sutherland developed the Agile approach – it makes sense that I would find the answer here. 

Jeff Sutherland based his Agile methodology on a paper written by two Japanese professors – Hirotaka Tageuchi and Ikujiro Nonaka called The New New Product Development Game. This paper was published in the Harvard Business Review in 1986, and it forms the basis of Sutherland’s Agile methodology.

This paper refers to the ‘Rugby Approach’, and reading it explains why the term scrum was used.

Relay Race versus Rugby

The authors drew two analogies in the paper – the first one was that traditional product development as espoused by NASA with their PPP (Phased Program Planning) system was like a relay race.

Each team does its work, and then hands it over to the next team after their checkpoint is met. In this relay race each team is made of specialists, and there is no overlapping of phases. Design should be completed before development begins, and development should be completed before testing can begin, and so on and so forth.

In contrast to this the authors were recommending a rugby approach where the whole team is made of specialists, phases overlap, and team members work together to take the ball forward. One of the most remarkable rules of rugby is that you cannot pass the ball forward! You have to pass the ball behind you and run forward with it.

They called these two different ways of thinking the linear approach versus the integrated approach, and the process itself was called the overlapping development process.

Sequential versus Overlapping Phases of Development

Source: HBR

In the paper, they write about moving the Scrum downfield, and this is where the term scrum is used.

So, when the term scrum is used – it is not literally referring to the scrum rugby players engage in, but rather the process of passing the ball back and forth, and working as a unit to take the ball down-field.

The Sashimi Analogy

Another interesting expression used in the paper is the Sashimi style of product development. This was in fact the name of the system used by Fuji Xerox when it changed their PPP system that they inherited that from their parent organization to a more overlapping system.

Sashimi itself is when you place raw fish with a slight overlap on each other, and it made sense that they used this analogy in Japan.

Sashimi

Source: Flickr

Another interesting thing about the naming was that the authors were very careful not to use the word Lean anywhere as it had a strong connotation with the system produced by Toyota, and they didn’t want their message to be obfuscated with Toyota’s methodology.

The principal idea that the authors were trying to convey, and that Sutherland adopted was to contrast the traditional waterfall way of doing things of moving from one phase to another to one where all phases overlapped, and a team was formed of people with diverse skills.

They used two very memorable analogies to state this – the relay team versus the rugby team, and scrum was a natural way for them to describe this. It doesn’t literally refer to the scrum that rugby players get into but rather refers to the interplay between various players who work as a unit to move the ball down the field, and work together to that end.

Book Review: Tune Your Chess Tactics Antenna

by Leave a Comment

I recently finished reading this book, and I think it is a great resource for any improving chess player. The big idea of the book is that you need to develop a sense for when tactics are present in the game, and there is a specific method to do that. The book lists out certain signals that alert you to the presence of a combination.

An excerpt from the book explaining the signal:

A signal is a weakness in the opponent’s position. When we look for a signal, we look for a reason why we should be winning. Since Steinitz, we know that the combination does not appear randomly, but as a consequence of the positional superiority of one side. This superiority lies in positive factors, let’s say more active pieces. But we can take the opposite approach: looking at the opponent’s position, we can establish that he has passive pieces; or they may be trapped, locked in or lacking coordination.

Further, the book also lists out the signals you should look for in your game.

  1. King’s Position
  2. Unprotected Pieces
  3. Alignment
  4. Knight Fork Distance
  5. Trapped pieces
  6. Overloaded defender
  7. Defence too far away

When you see a signal above appearing on the board – you should start looking for tactics, and combinations, and reading the book and practicing the puzzles in there help you do just that.

I was able to read, and implement these ideas immediately, and also without much conscious effort. When you practice the tactics based around a certain signal and theme then your brain starts looking for these patterns subconsciously and you will be able to find them in real time in your games.

This is an example from a recent game I played:

Black has just played Qd7 and castling would be quite normal for white here. However, I can sense that black played Qd7 to possibly castle queen side, and as soon as he does that his king and queen will be aligned on the light squares. I have a light square bishop which I can use, but it will unprotected at h3 which is the square from where I can attack him, and he also has e6 in reserve. Fortunately for me Nf4, solves both of those problems, and you can see this is exactly how the game goes.

This book was very useful for me, and I recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone looking to improve their chess tactical ability.

Book Review: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie

by Leave a Comment

I have read this book twice now, and I find it immensely helpful. This book can be read in a few hours, and while it probably doesn’t contain anything you didn’t already know – it is always helpful to be reminded of such things specially when you are going through a stressful period in your own life. This is also touched upon in the book itself which has the following passage:

If you were to read everything that has ever been written about worry by the great scholars of all time, you would never read anything more basic or more profound than such hackneyed proverbs as “Don’t cross your bridges until you come to them” and “Don’t cry over spilt milk.” If we only applied those two proverbs instead of snorting at them, we wouldn’t need this book at all.

There are several quotes in the book which I quite like, and this is consistent with Dale Carnegie’s writing as well, which lends it a familiarity when you are reading it.

An example of a quote I really liked:

“Our main business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.”

This particular quote really resonated with me because at the time of reading this book – there were a number of things going on in my life, and I was going crazy thinking about all the different outcomes there could be if a thing turned out one way or if it did another.

In the end thinking about all of it at once is far too overwhelming, and ultimately you go down a rabbit hole of worries that you are better off away from. Much more prudent is to live in what the book calls “day-tight compartments” and finish off the tasks at hand. This will make you feel much more in control of your life, and ultimately if you do these things today they will help you prepare much better for the future.

I really like How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie, and I think I have read it twice now, and can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who finds themselves worrying too much about things out of their control.