Tom Gilb (2:54)

Process of about 15 steps and there's a paper on that which I can supply if somebody reminds me now the.

Tom Gilb (3:07)

Let'S go straight to the.

Tom Gilb (3:11)

Idea there of testing, okay? I, I believe the whole focus of it, people on testing and finding bugs and correcting them and defects is completely wrong and irrelevant. And it is the doom of agile people. Because managers aren't really interested in bugs.

Tom Gilb (3:34)

They can be annoying. They're interested in results, in improvements in their business, what we call business value.

Tom Gilb (3:48)

We need to stop talking about testing. Somebody has to do it at some level. Okay, but that's not the essential thing. We need to talk about measurement of enhanced or increased value.

Tom Gilb (4:01)

At every cycle. Measurement, measurement, measurement. Now, if you have not quantified your critical values, the stuff that management really cares about, you can't measure what you haven't defined and people haven't defined their value. So it starts with the, the simple idea that it's not about reducing the bugs to zero. That's a programmer's view of the world. The manager's view of the world is, am I going to look good to the board of directors or to my CEO? And, and it's got nothing to do with bugs, okay? So we got to get away from the bug finding, testing, you know, does the logic work? That's appropriate at a lower level. Okay, but where we're failing is to Quantify the top 10 critical stakeholder values, whatever they be, and then design, as we mentioned in the previous episode, strategies that will help you get the values. And then we need to measure in short cycles, like every week that the values are incrementing. If they only increment 2% at a time, well within one year, by definition, you've got 100% of what you want. Okay, but you've got to measure. We expected the values to move forward by 3% next week. You need to measure that you did move forward approximately 3%. Or not. Or not means you've got the wrong strategy. Time to pivot, time to change, time to learn. Okay? If you did, move ahead, more of the same. Keep on going with confidence. This whole idea of testing as we have it is irrelevant for the management and value delivery level.

Host (5:58)

I think that's very important. So I remember this anecdote by Deming. He called it the American toast. How do we make toast in America? I mean, he was American, so he was talking about America. He said, we burn the toast and then we pay someone to scrape off the black bits off the bread.

Tom Gilb (6:16)

Well put.

Host (6:18)

And that's what testing really is in software today. But as Tom was mentioning, the goal is not to make sure that the software works.

Host (6:28)

We expect a very low bar for delivering software. Right. Like that. It should work. Of course it should work.

Simon (6:35)

The stable stakes. That's what you're getting paid for.

Host (6:37)

Stable stakes, exactly. But we should be focusing is, are we progressing towards the value?

Vasco (6:44)

Right.

Host (6:44)

And I think Tom explained very clearly that the cycle should be short and we should have a clear direction. And I remember interviewing a fighter pilot here on the podcast who have this.

Host (6:56)

Of course, they have doctrine in the armed forces. This is a fighter pilot. They have a specific process they go through before they get onto the plane to complete the mission. And at every point in the mission. So we're talking about a couple of hours or even a couple of minutes, this depending on the mission. Right. At every step of the mission, at every critical step of the mission, they were trained to ask four questions. Where are we going? Where are we now? Where should we have been at this point? And why is there a gap?

Tom Gilb (7:27)

And this is so excellent, Excellent summary.

Host (7:30)

Exactly. And they do this at the micro cycle. So not just the very short cycles that Tom is talking about, but they do this every minute. Every checkpoint. The mission has many checkpoints. Right. At which they might decide to abort. This is a very important aspect. Like today's strategy implementation does not have abort criteria. This is disastrous for most organizations. And I would say, and I would be interested in Simon's take on this, I would say the reason why we're there is because we're trying to imitate the economic planning model of the 1970s Soviet Union. We're not even being capitalists. Right. We're not even paying any homage to the capitalist theorists of the world. We're repeating the same mistakes that the Soviet Union had in the 1970s in which we're creating a plan and then we're punishing everybody that doesn't follow the plan, which guarantees fake compliance and too late discovery of the errors that both of you have mentioned. Simon, what do you think about that?

Simon (8:38)

I mean, the system runs on hiding and obscuring error detection, guaranteeing crappy output by definition.

Host (8:48)

I think that's how it is. Right, but how do we. Simon, you've consulted many people who have to make critical decisions on a regular basis. How do you help these people not be afraid of making decisions faster with more, let's say, detailed and specific information about where they are versus where they want to be? Like, how do you convince them to step out of the. I've planned it so it will work kind of mindset.

Simon (9:17)

So first I don't convince them of anything because that's doomed to fail. What I listen for is what is their approximate language? Do they speak OODA loop? Do they speak pdca? Do they speak Shewart cycles? Do they speak evo? Do they speak blah blah blah blah blah, right? I listen for what language is closest to them. If they're in the military, we go right to OODA loops. If it's about a social technology, we go to Captain Marquette. So I just, you know, I'm a history teacher and a, you know, dork. So I listen for signals from their point of view. So instead of trying to jump on their shoulder like, you know, some sort of revolutionary Che Guevara wah wah wah wah. It's like, no, no, where are you now? You just said the four questions, right? I'm just going to listen and respond. That's the sense and adapt. It's an evolutionary perspective to the interaction which says we're going to co evolve some sort of value thing together first and over time run the OODA loops, run the did it learning cycles, then you step up that value without it costing or hurting more.

Vasco (10:18)

Talking about stepping up of value.

Host (10:20)

Please stay tuned. Tomorrow we're going to talk about how do we actually get to measure all of this. We're going to talk about something that Tom Gilb Quality 5.0. So stay tuned and talk to you tomorrow. Simon and Tom, thank you for being here.

Simon (10:35)

Pleasure as always.

Vasco (10:40)

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