I knew that some people thought that rationality was beside the point. I knew that there were some people who were more interested in relationships than in ideas. But this was the first time that somebody had told me that the world itself was not a logical place. And not only that, but that the world should not be a logical place. I found (and still find) the idea unsettling. More than that, I found the perceived disconnect between relationships and logic unsettling. The idea that relationships don't have their own internal logic and rules. The idea that in the world of relationships, not only did logic not apply, but was irrelevant and annoying.

I thought about that world. It was by far the best explanation of why software projects fail that I ever heard.

It explains why software projects get started. Software projects don't get started out of anything like a cost benefit analysis. The way people feel causes software projects to start. People start projects because they're frustrated. They start projects because they hope. And when computer geeks come in and start asking a bunch of random useless or pointless questions that get in the way of the grand vision, that scribble all over delicately maintained relationships and contribute nothing... well, it's no wonder. Hope and fear. In the beginning, the hope compels. In the end, the fear paralyses.

The fundamental disconnect is miscommunication. Many times a team will recognize that the meaning is being lost in the message. But the problem isn't simply more meetings and more bullet points. A business or marketing team will be composed of NFs. A technical team will be composed of NTs. To understand each other, it is not enough to use different words or forego jargon. It is necessary to understand the other's frame of reference.

A technical team has to be able to speak an emotional language. The technical team has to understand the hopes and fears of the business team, and address those first and foremost. It has to understand that the business team may view what they do as irrelevant to the world that they inhabit. Perhaps it's overblown for a meeting to start by asking everyone how they feel (yes, I read Software For Your Head), but it does seem like recognition of the emotional dynamics in a project is missing. And for the business team, they don’t realize how as soon as they’ve started a software project, they’re not just dealing with different people. They’ve entered a different world.

At any rate, it does a lot of good for me to realize that explaining "why" to some people doesn't make them feel any better.

With all this buzzing in my head, I barely remember that it was lunch until I saw the line of people under the pagoda. I talked to Johanna Rothman about the business of consulting and marketing, and again found myself struggling to keep up, if only because Johanna dispensed information at such a rate that I couldn't write it down fast enough.

Finally there was the last session of the conference. This was "Management behind Closed Doors," reflecting the new book that Esther and Johanna had published. They started off the session by discussing their own experience. Esther wrote code. She found that she was good at writing code, but found that different rules applied to management. We went through an exercise that split teams up into workers and managers. The workers had to build origami. More complicated origami took longer, but was sold for more. The managers had to get resources for their workers (paper), resolve concerns, and give status updates and provide coaching.

I elected to become a manager. Meetings were called every three minutes, and we were given different strategies and changes of leadership. In short, complete chaos. I thought that I would hate it, but I found that I actually loved keeping track of everything and exploring different avenues to resolve conflicting demands.

The second time the exercise was held, I became a worker. There were no meetings held. Teams worked together to ensure that the theory of origami was well understood, and the work environment was relaxed and sane. At the end of the exercise, far more origami had been produced despite less visible management from the top.

After that, we talked about why businesses are the way they are. But at that point I had to run to catch the SuperShuttle, so I didn't play attention as much as everyone else.

I think that AYE 2005 was worth it. I met many interesting people, and had conversations with people who thought I was interesting. Which is always nice. More importantly, I came away with the new understanding of the methods we use in the field and the ideas that we have in our heads as we use those methods. And finally, I came away with a better understanding of myself. And I'll leave it at that.