Getting Started

Now you are a new member of this team of smart, experienced, and very talented people. How do you get started?

Sometimes it looks to me that the most difficult part is to make sure that the team starts to shift its mindset. This does not mean at all that everything that the team did in the past or everything they are doing today is wrong. Quite the opposite.

A mindshift helps looking on everything in a new light. For instance it might help to rerun an experiment that failed a few months ago because one of the tools wasn't up to the job. If you have a new version of the tool this time the experiment might have a different outcome.

A mindshift also helps you to move to a different approach while - maybe - continue operating the same. For instance when you are used to larger and more complex projects or tools or designs then it can be quite challenging to move in the other direction. What about smaller and simpler?

A mindshift might also require challenging some of your assumptions. What if you are assuming that you get punished if an experiment fails? Maybe that assumption was correct many years ago and you internalized it so much that you are not even aware of it. What if the assumption is incorrect?

Getting started can be very difficult and sometimes it takes a lot of courage. Yes, it is good to know all those reasons why something cannot be done. In engineer's terminology this is the list of rists. But then: aren't we engineers to to make things work despite other people saying it cannot be done?

So try small experiments, maybe a couple of people for a couple of days. Maybe the experiment fails. No problem. Then you know yet another way that doesn't work and you have learned more about the challenge.

But maybe the experiment is successful. Then you have started to move. Admittedly just a tiny little step but you have moved. And you have learned as well. And maybe after you have moved you can identify the next thing already that is worth trying which was hidden or impossible before your move.

Let's look at a real life example to illustrate my point: Let's assume you have that mixture of unmanaged C++ and .NET code and you want to move all of your code to the .NET world. Then switch on that /clr flag and see what happens. Maybe it is successful and maybe then the code for communicating between the two worlds can go away, and maybe then you start seeing new options for what the next best move can be.