📚 Feature Factory, Making Sense of Deming, WTF Notebook & Prediction Markets
Heavenly Kashmir + a lot more for the curious YOU
Hi, this is post #161.
Last two weeks were a good break, away from work and the usual life. We had some last minute hiccups, but things turned out great in the end. I’ve curated some moments to share with you, check them out in the first piece today.
Now, I’m back fully refreshed and ready for new adventures. We start with the regular publishing with today’s post.
I’m looking to pick some new topics & themes for exploration. Travel and experience is top of the list. If you’ve any recommendations, tell me more. If you’ve any suggestions on the format, do share on that as well.
Let’s take a quick look at today’s post
And now, onto today's finds…
🏔️ Heavenly Kashmir
“Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.”
If there is a heaven on earth, it’s here, it’s here.
I’ve heard this umpteen times, seen the beauty it describes on cinema screen but never experienced it myself. After a week in Kashmir, I can vouch that this poem describes an eternal truth.
Beautiful green meadows, snow capped mountains, dense forests filled with tall sky touching fir & deodar trees, rivers bubbling with ice cold white water and people with warm hearts & lots of stories to share - that’s what you are going to experience every moment you spend in this valley.
I’m glad we took this break and chose Kashmir to be our destination. We created innumerable memories to be cherished for the rest of our lives. And till we go back there to make some more.
Here is one picture capturing everything we saw and experienced.
If you’re keen for more, I’ve curated some of my best shots in the shared albums below:
Gurez, Wular Lake & Razdan Pass (Highlight of our trip)
🤹 Feature Factory
John Cutler has written two posts on ‘feature factories’.
I will take liberty to make a claim that most of us would have worked in a ‘feature factory’. If you don’t agree with me, go and read the first post. He describes it beautifully. A couple of a not so obvious but sure shot signs:
No measurement. Teams do not measure the impact of their work. Or, if measurement happens, it is done in isolation by the product management team and selectively shared. You have no idea if your work worked
Success theater around “shipping” with little discussion about impact. You can tell a great deal about an organization by what it celebrates
Culture of hand-offs. Front-loaded process in place to “get ahead of the work” so that items are “ready for engineering”. Team is not directly involved in research, problem exploration, or experimentation and validation. Once work is shipped, team has little contact with support, customer success, and sales
3 years later, he revisited the post and outlined some of the reasons this phenomenon exists. As he suggested, and you will agree, no org intends to become a feature factory. They become one as an outcome of many interplaying factors. John’s followup post gives some good inputs on the factors that could be ailing your org.
🏭 Making Sense of Deming
W. Edwards Deming is one of the greatest thinkers on operational excellence and proponent of statistical quality control. His ideas have guided businesses over generations and are fundamental to many lessons that the current breed of operational leaders.
Commoncog has compiled a primer called “Making Sense of Deming” covering his “System of Profound Knowledge.” This system ultimately led to his set of action-able recommendations that he called the 14 Points. Some of these ideas are fairly straightforward and don’t need a lot of explanations. Some others can be debated upon. Commoncog team has shared their inputs on each one, you can read and decide for yourself.
Here’s one idea for you: Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship, and eliminate the annual rating or merit system
What do you think about this?
📕 WTF Notebook
Nat Bennett tells us why we need a "WTF notebook." This is his way of building a very specific reputation he wants to have on a team: "Nat helps me solve my problems. Nat get things I care about done."
He sets the context:
Every time I join a new team, I go to the next fresh page, and on top of that page I write: "WTF - [Team Name]." Then I make a note every time I run into something that makes me go "wtf," and a task every time I come up with something I want to change.
For two weeks, that's all I do. I just write it down. I don't tell the team everything that I think they're doing wrong. I don't show up at retro with all the stuff I think they need to change. I just watch, and listen, and I write down everything that seems deeply weird.
He does not go about solving for all the things that he notes down. There is a logic to remove things that may not be the right choice for ‘fixing’ by him.
The journey from here to fixing some of the issues noticed and building a strong bond with his team members is a fairly smart approach and worth emulating.
(via Readwise)
💹 Prediction Markets
Nick Whitaker and J. Zachary Mazlish’s piece “Why prediction markets aren’t popular” is a good primer on the topic of “Prediction Markets”. They go on to describe how these markets work, key players involved and how these markets don’t work.
I’ve had a very cursory level understanding of this topic, this piece provided a good structure to improve my thought process.
A snippet for your reference:
(via Marginal Revolution)
💬 Group Chats Rule the World
Sriram Krishnan shared a long post on X talking about how group chats rule the world. Here’s his premise:
Most of the interesting conversations in tech now happen in private group chats: Whatsapp, Telegram, Signal, small invite-only Discord groups.
Being part of the right group chat can feel like having a peek at the kitchen of a restaurant but instead of food, messy ideas and gossip fly about in real time, get mixed, remixed, discarded, polished before they show up in a prepared fashion in public.
You could agree with him or not, it totally depends on the kind of group you’ve joined. But, his inputs on the dynamics of a ‘good group’ and what makes them work are useful for everyone thinking ‘community’.
A couple of inputs worth noting down:
The n-1 group:
Every group I’ve been a part of has had multiple side chats. This is to either make fun of, discuss in private or just to avoid certain loud personalities. This is desired! I look for this to know if a certain community is “working”.
Shared rituals:
The best group have shared rituals, jokes, routines. They range from the simple (post the same thing every week) to something deeper (organize a multi-day trip once a year). These rituals bring people together in deep ways and give meaning. After seeing several of these, you can easily see how religions and communities need these as a bonding experience.
Give this one a read, and then think about your favorite group. You will find some patterns that Sriram has spoken about. There is clearly some magic formulae here, a quick-and-dirty recipe if not an algorithm.
(via Marginal Revolution)
✨ Everything else
Remnants of a legendary typeface have been rescued from the River Thames.
I love it when I find a novel application of an art form. Jessica’s rendition of stained glasswork surprised me in a joyful way. It’s free form and merges very well with the surrounding while bringing out the best of stained glass & light play. Check out Studio_Saunders instagram feed to see for yourself. (via Colossal)
Anja Brunt’s whimsical paper collage art shows how to appreciate randomness. Brunt collects materials from every place imaginable. From papers she finds in chocolate boxes and antique playing cards to instruction leaflets and train tickets, the artist sources both aged pieces and contemporary media gathered from her daily life. (via Colossal)
If you missed last week’s post, you can find it here.
That's all for this week, folks!
I hope I've earned the privilege of your time.
If you liked this post, please hit the ❤️ below, leave a comment or share with someone who will find it useful too. It’s highly encouraging.
Welcome back from the vacay!