Things started as normal, but since I got started so early I took the time to clean up the west side of the house. Then I managed to rake and clean up a bit more. I pulled some weeds. Much of the work I did was not visible most of the time but it bothered me just a little. Then I got to the part of the job that was visible. I took a little extra time raking, sweeping, mowing, etc. I was “done” earlier than I had expected and then I made a crucial decision, it was time to take care of the bamboo.
3 years ago I planted an 8 foot by 2 foot plot of bamboo. When I did that I dug down 2 feet into the ground. Not knowing how to dig like a professional, it took me a long time - total planting time was 13 hours. 32 cubic feed of dirt and clay takes a lot of work to remove. I needed to dig so deep to put a protective lining around the bamboo. There are two kinds of bamboo you might plant. One kind stays in clumps and doesn’t invade everything. That’s not the kind I planted. I plated the kind that takes over. Thus, I needed to dig 2 feet into the ground and surround the bed with a thick plastic lining. I did all the prep work but then I decided I would let it move into my yard but not into the neighbor’s yard. So I left the front of the bed open.
Fast forward 3 years and notice that the bamboo moved more quickly than I imagined. I’ve been meaning to get to this outside job, but I’ve managed to put it off. I decided to dig a 2-foot deep trench in the front of the bed and add in the missing plastic lining. It took me about 6 hours. Here it is two days later and my hands and forearms are still quite sore. Much of the digging at the top was easy, but as I got deeper, the digging got more difficult. Then I hit clay. That was even worse. I really didn’t have the right tool for the job. I needed a trench digger, but I had a regular shovel, a gardening shovel and a standard spade. These were ok at the top but not as I worked deeper into the ground.
Finally, needing a break, I went to buy more lawn supplies including: pete moss, top soil, steaks, fencing, grass seed, lime, oh, and a 4 inch trench digger.
I was about 20 inches into the ground. The last inch had cost me plenty. The 2 inch bruise on the palm of my right hand (yes, I wore gloves) is one example. That last inch took me maybe an hour. 4 more inches would take me longer than another 4 hours. The trench digger, however, made it more like 15 minutes.
When I started digging I knew I needed to start wider at the top because the trench would naturally get narrower as I worked my way into the ground. This might not be the case if either a: I knew what I was doing, or b: I had the right tools for the job. So I started much wider than “necessary” to give me a little slack later.
That decision was key. Even though I eventually bought the right tool for the job, a 4 inch trench digger, if the trench was too narrow to use it, then I still would have been out of luck. So this decision made it possible for me to use the right tool later.
I managed to finish the trench, line the bed, replace the soil and then get about 100 square feet of yard reseeded.
Other than sore muscles, bruises and the satisfaction of getting something off my well-aged to-do list, what other take aways do I have from this experience?
- Adoption of best practices
- Leave a little slack
- Right tool for the job
Adoption of Best Practices
There’s a great story of a manager of a Coca-cola plant who’s numbers were far better than his peers. When asked what his “secret” was, he said simply that rather than take a best practice and modify it to meet what the plant did, he instead modified the plant to match the best practice. His secret was not trying to be too clever.
I knew that I should have lined the bed three years ago. I knew that bamboo can spread. There was a well-established best practice on planting bamboo. It was easy to follow. I had everything I needed to follow the practice. I had a 2 foot deep hole just begging to be fully lined. I though I was more clever and decided to just line the back of the bed. So 3 years later I managed to spend 6 hours doing something that would have been an additional 2 minutes. If I had just followed the best practice recommended by people who were experts, I would have avoided most of the work I did and all of the bruises, scratches, etc.
The best practice when adoption best practices is to adopt the best practice. If you decide to modify a best practice to your local conditions before having direct experience with the practice, the very problems that lead you to consider adopting the practice will be the same thing that will mange to remove all the teeth out of the best practice.
Does this mean you don’t adapt the practice? No. It just means you need to fully understand the practice and more importantly what are its intentions before you start to modify it. When you have direct experience with it, that, coupled with the knowledge of your current challenges, might give you a better chance of coming up with something that works even better. Or, you might just keep with the practice as is.
I had another recent experience with this regarding Uncle Bob’s TPP. From my reading of his example, he also practiced TDD as if you mean it. I talked to him about this and sure enough he confirmed it. I was working on a “known” problem - a kata. I resisted doing what he had done because it wasn’t what I had done in the past. I even recognized this and mentioned it to him. I decided to just see what happens. Well I ate crow that evening because when I did it, the kata moved quite smoothly for me. In fact, better than it had in the past. It didn’t require as much planning ahead.
What can you do about this? If you can figure out how you tend to resist change, and then notice when you are doing so, you might be able to just work through it. In my case I could tell I was resisting change rather than rejecting the idea - if I slow down a bit and just pay attention I can make that determination, something I learned from practicing Yoga. As for how you can start to learn this, here’s one exercise you could try. Another idea is to try Yoga - or - try pausing whenever you find yourself resisting something and ask yourself the question: am I resisting the idea or change. If you’re not sure, then give it a try (and assume you’re resisting the change).
Leave a Little Slack
I stared digging by marking a line where I wanted to put the new edge. I then dug a shallow trench about a foot wide. The extra width was to give me enough room to work. While it might seem like more work at first, in fact it gave me enough rom to move around, attack the dirt at different angles and I used the “extra” dirt to fill a hole dug by my dogs in the bamboo (I hope it recovers).
As I got deeper, I used different kinds of shovels, and the trench became narrower because of the angle I was using to dig, which was related to the tools I used. When I finally hit clay, the larger shovels were too hard to work with both because of the angle but also because of the density of the clay and the amount I was trying to move. I started using a hand-shovel I use for gardening.
When I bought the right tool it was possible to use because there was enough room for it. Unlike the other shovels that are 10 inches wide or wider, this one was 4 inches wide. It worked perfectly. I was able to take out about 1 - 2 inches laterally and 3 - 4 inches deep at a time. While it might seem like slow going, it was blazing fast compared to my previous attempts.
Right Tools
Growing up on a farm in Iowa, my dad often reminded me of the idea of using the right tool for a job. You might be able to use another tool, but if you use the right tool for the job, it will just go smoother.
My wife bough a few pruning tools last fall. One in particular was much nicer than I might have bought. In the past I would just use the shovel to try and break the roots. This, as you might imagine, is hard work. It will eventually work, but as the roots get bigger, the work grows at least by the square of the diameter (I think the difficulty is NP hard (grin) but that’s because I don’t do this work on a regular basis). When I started the trench this time, I used that tool instead of the shovel. To be sure, it required a touch more work. I had to find it in the garage (it was where I though it would be), I had to carry it to the back yard. When I finished the job I had to put it away.
However, it was exactly the right thing to cut the roots that I came across. Trying to use a shovel to cut those roots in the past versus using a proper pruning tool is a great way to have a kinesthetic experience on the use of the right tool for the job.
As I used the pruning tool, I was reminded of this “right tool for the job.” When I took a break to buy more stuff to do more work on the yard, I looked for and found the trench digger. It was a bit expensive. I’ll probably use it for this one job and never again. Even so, within 2 minutes of using it, I did not regret the money spent versus the time saved. This initial impression was confirmed when I moved so much more quickly than I had been moving in more difficult situations. If I never use that tool again it was still the right thing for me to do. If I ever need to dig a trench again, I’m ready for it.
The danger is that you buy a tool for the problem you think you have but while it solves the apparent problem, the actual problem is something else. Case in point, scripting tools for ui-based checking.
I am not against using scripting tools, far from it. However, the secret of checking the UI is to design the code so that most of the logic is unit checkable, here's one such example. The scripting tool seems to be solving the problem of manual checking but that’s a surface problem. A well-design system makes it possible to easily look at it in ways that let you know if it works as expected. We’re used to thinking about headless checking, but what about body-less checking?
Conclusion
When adopting a practice, consider embracing it without change to get an actual read on the practice. Consider not being too clever. Once you have actual experience, then consider adapting the practice. I think being able to do this requires similar work to design. Often we think of the work we do and how we do that work as so tightly coupled that they cannot be separated. To be sure, this is sometimes the case. Even so, trying to treat the what and the how as separate can lead to a better understanding of where things are separable and where they are not.
There's a cost to switching tools. Your current tool may have costs that are either hidden or are accepted to the point that these costs are effectively hidden. As with practices, look around and see what tools other people are using. If you decide to try using a tool, use that tool. Don't adapt the use of the tool to your environment, conform to how the tool is designed to be used. Once you have an idea of how the tool is meant to be used, then consider adapting.
Making room to try a practice or tool as it is intended before adapting is a form of slack. Doing this may appear to take longer. In the short term this might be the case. Often what we see as a short term think becomes "the" thing and the decisions we made in the original context cost us more when we suddenly realize we're running a marathon. Introducing a practice or tool is introducing change. Most people resist change, so maybe applying this idea about adopting practices is a way to preemptively respond to change. Consider giving yourself some slack and try to embrace the tool or practice long enough to have an opinion not too clouded by your current reality. You might be surprised what happens. Try this a few times to see if it works for you. If it doesn't then consider adapting how your adopt changes.
