Re: Proposal: Proposals are the wrong approach [prose and long]

[Andrew Starks <andrew.starks@...>]

On Tue, May 13, 2014 at 11:55 PM, Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2014-05-14 6:33 GMT+02:00 Isaac Dupree <ml@isaac.cedarswampstudios.org>:
>> On 05/13/2014 12:21 PM, Steve Litt wrote:
>>>
>>> I've never quite understood why people keep trying to make
>>> minor changes to Lua, an exquisitely simple and effective language.
>>
>>
>> Maybe it's because Lua is so simple and easy to change that people can
>> imagine themselves doing it, unlike all those other languages :-)
>
> The trouble is that most people imagine the Lua team doing it, rather
> than actually doing it themselves.
>

And, to circle back, as an effective means of communicating an idea or
desire, proposals just don't work very well, generally. It's
especially true here, where the argument has no natural stopping
point.[1]

Product management is a domain of knowledge that needs more exposure.

--Andrew

[1] Until it gets to about 100 messages in the thread count and
Roberto steps in to cut it off. :)

Fluff:

When I was in sales and marketing, I would use my domain knowledge to
ask for things. This drove our developers nuts. Then, we adopted
"Scrum Lite" and that felt to me as though they asked that I shut off
my brain.

Them: Don't ask for features. Instead, start out and say, "As the user
I would like to be able to _____ so that I can ____ ..."

It took *years* for me to understand why the seemingly direct and
clear approach of asking for what you want was ultimately destructive.
I still find the fill in the blank "As the user method" to be
nauseating, but we've evolved from there and now we pretty much all
hold hands in product meetings, we're so friendly and close. :)

It's sadly ironic that you can browse around GitHub issue lists and
find "feature" thing going on:

Requester: "I need an appendage added so that this works with my
custom dohickey on my Amiga. Here's a pull request that does this one
specific thing that you're going to need to support forever."

Repository Owner: "Thanks for making me feel needed and popular by
paying attention to my project! How about I adjust it slightly and add
it, in the name of community!"