Deliberate Practice (Part 2) - The Case of the Test First Developer

Table of Contents

The Case of the Shut In Drummer (Part 1)

• Introduction
• Deliberate Practice In Music
• More Information

The Case of the Test First Developer (this part)

• Deliberate Practice In Software Development
• More Information

eliberate Practice In Software Development

The Case of the Test First Developer

So how do we deliberately practice in order to improve our programming skills?

I use the same principles that I use to improve my bass playing to improve the software I produce.

Overlooked Opportunities

I find that many developers focus too much on learning language and frameworks features. While a full understanding of the tools you are using is essential, if you simply stop there, you are missing so many opportunities for improvement. Implementation is only one phase in the software lifecycle, you should not neglect the other phases nd within implementation itself there are so many dimensions that it is unlikely you will run out of things to improve even if you feel you know the implementation platform back to front.

On-the-job Learning

Within my normal work there are many opportunities to practice. To keep it fresh I will focus on different improvement goals each session. In one session I may focus on composability, in another readability in another testability. In one session I will identify and exact reusable components from existing code in another test whether a particular approach or design pattern will keep the design simple or if an alternative would be better. 

Feedback

Test first design is ideal for maximizing immediate feedback. Pair programming gives lots of potential for feedback if you take advantage of it. Code reviews are a great way of getting feedback, however so often programmers see it as an annoyance. Tightening the feedback loop by getting early feedback from testers or users can be helpful.

Learning by Teaching

Teaching others is helpful in improving your understanding of the material. Whether helping a teammate with a problem or teaching a workshop on a topic or presenting at a meetup, the need to break down what needs to be done into small easily understood steps can help your own understanding and help organize your existing knowledge.

Learning from the Pain Points

I used the need to document an existing internal API to help drive improvement to the API. For each section in the API I would ask how can I change the API so as to make this section of the documentation u6nnecessary. I ended up simplifying the API a great deal making it much easier to use.

Learning using Practice Problems

You can use code katas or code koans to help practice your programming skills and there are many sites that offer problems for you to practice (see below).  

More Information

Related Posts

• Self-Directed Learning - My Learning Plan
• Goal Setting 
• Select the Right Skills to Improve
• Deliberate Practice: Music
• Positive Deviance
• Double Loop Learning
• Growth Mindset
• Learning by Doing
• Online Resources for Software Developers 

Articles

• Code Katas
• Code Koans

Videos

• The Deliberate Developer

Problems to Practice

• Project Euler - Solve mathematical problems using programming skills
• LeetCode - Solve coding challenges, competitions and mock interview
• HackerRank - Offers a variety of different types of programming challenges
• TopCoder - Solve algorithmic challenges within a time limit
• Code Wars - Community submitted challenges and discussions
• Code Chef - Community site with challenges, competitions and tutorials
• CoderByte - Coding challenges and tutorials
• Exercism - Coding challenges with assistance from mentors.
• Sphere Online Judge - Coding challenges, competitions and discussions
• Hacker Earth - programming challenges and  interview preparation

Programming Games

• Codingame - program simple games then play them
• RoboCode - program tank AIs and pit them against others
• CodeCombat - write code to solve puzzles

Positive Deviance

hen faced with adverse circumstances

most people will muddle through but some will deviate from the norm doing much better or worse than normal. Those that do worse than normal are called negative deviants and are what we normally think of when we think of deviants. However there are also people who thrive in the most disadvantageous situation. These are the positive deviants and much can be learned from them.

So why are they succeeding while others fail? The Fundamental Attribution Error leads people to leap to the conclusion that positive deviants are simply better or that they have a hidden advantage or that they are cheating. However the usual explanation is they have different perspectives, approaches, tactics, strategies and/or attitudes. Things that could be copied by their less successful brethren.

Reasons Successful Strategies Don't Spread

Why aren't the successful techniques of positive deviants not copied by their underperforming peers.

There are several reasons.

Lack of Communication

There has been a bit of work in this area, both in how to improve communication and what hinders it and what encourages it.

The Spillover Effect

This is a well known effect where workers sitting near high performer also have increased performance, lending weight to the notion that the ability to succeed can be learned.

Brown Bag Lunches and Communities of Practice

Are both methods to share success strategies between peers.

Knowledge Management

A systematic discipline to spread this kind of information in an organised way.

Motivation to Learn 

Unfortunately the people who seek out information by deliberately hang out with high performers to get tips or attend events to develop professionally are also the kind of people who are likely to already be positive deviants.

Preconceived Ideas

Why would you bother learning a better way when you already know the best way?

There is often an obvious conventional common sense way of doing things; the way people who are getting average results are doing it. Unfortunately conventional wisdom is often more conventional than wise, and common sense is more common than sensible. Those who are getting unusual results are unlikely to be using the usual methods. There is a reason that the first step in learning a new discipline is often unlearning everything you learned as a layperson. High performers may even be criticised or viewed with suspicion for not doing things the proper way. This effect will be greatly magnified if the high performer belongs to a minority.

Conformity

People feel a need to belong. Sharing beliefs and activities is a way to achieve this, bucking the trend can feel uncomfortable.

Doing something different can also be risky. If you follow the herd and fail then at least you can point to others and say they did not succeed either. However if you attempt change and fail you are on your own.

The difference between a odd ball and a leader is that all important first follower. However if your follower is also marginalized or low status you may still have trouble getting traction.

Fundamental Attribution Error

If you believe it is all down to talent then you are not going to be experimenting, innovating or capturing others strategies. This harks back to the growth mindset.

Combatting the Saviour Complex

When faced with people in trouble the temptation is to parachute in and rescue them using your own knowledge and experience. However techniques and strategies don't always transfer between situations. World nutrition is full of failures were NGOs failed to listen to locals and introduced crops that were eaten by local pest or worse had the opposite problem and spread out of control. And even if you do have the solution unless you make listening your first step you are not going to have the buy-in to make your solution work.

The people at coalface usually know the solution to their problems, its just that, this knowledge is unevenly distributed.

Positive Deviancy in the Real World

The Case of the Well Fed Child

The original and most famous example of leveraging positive deviancy for impact was Jerry and Monique Sternin's work with Save the Children in Vietnam in the 1990s.

Having insufficient funds and facing hostility from the Vietnamese government, they turned their disadvantages into an advantage by embracing the need for an unconventional approach. They conducted a health survey of a poor village measuring the well being of the children of poor families. They identified multiple positive deviants, families that despite being the poorest of the poor still managed to keep their children healthy.

Talking with these families the Sternins identified three factors that would allow any poor villager too keep their children well nourished. They recruited these parents as teachers and distributed this knowledge through free cooking events. Having the cooking ingredients (which only cost the time to gather them) be the price of admission both kept costs low and became a important part of the lesson.

Malnutrition fell dramatically in the area covered by the Sternins' program and the skeptical Vietnamese government was won over.

Follow up studies showed a long term improvement on children's health long after the program ended.

Positive Deviancy in My Own Career

The Case of the Speedy Data Processor

Many years ago I was working in the geophysical survey industry writing software to transform geophysical data into a visual form (a map) so that experts could identify possible mining sites. My software was used by data processers, while most of the data processers were taking 5-6 hours to produce a map, there was one that was completing maps in almost half that time.

The data processers used a series of utilities selected from a suite of applications build and maintained over decades. These applications were applied to very large datasets for that time, therefore long run times weren't unexpected. Much of the functionality of these applications was only necessary in a small percentage of use cases. The speedy data processer was using configuration options to turn off unnecessary processing. The other data processers were unaware of these options and even when they were aware of them they tended to leave the options on 'just in case'.

I went though the processing steps one by one, optimizing some, changing some from default on to default off, and removing many that the domain experts identified as obsolete. The most time intensive application went from taking three hours to finishing in twelve minutes. I reduced the end to end process by more than a factor of three.

This improvement was made possible because as I was working in the map room I noticed one of my co-workers was twice as productive as the others and asked the right questions.

Articles

• Positive Deviance Collaborative
• Positive Deviance (Wikipedia)
• Positive Psychology - Positive Deviance
• Discovering the Secret Sauce

Videos

• TEDx Talk by Monique Sternin
• The Power of Positive Deviance by Richard Pascale

Books

The Power of Positive Deviance by Pascale Sternin & Sternin

 

Related Posts

• Growth Mindset
• Double Loop Learning
• Goal Setting
• Learning by Doing
  
• Deliberate Practice: Programming
• Deliberate Practice: Music
• Select the Right Skills to Improve

Double Loop Learning

he plan–do–check–act cycle is a great way of structuring what you are doing to incorporate feedback and learning into your results. Its great and I use it all the time, however it is an example of single loop learning. It is a good starting point, but if you stop at the PDCA cycle you are missing out.

What you are doing and what you are learning does not exist in isolation but as a part of a wider context. Paraphrasing the well worn marketing tip "Our customers do not want drills bits they want holes", that is, smaller goals exist to further larger goals. Periodically zoom out to that wider context and re-assess based on what you have learned.

Does what you have learned during your first attempts mean you need to change

• The theoretical framework you use to understand the topic

• The learning techniques you are using to master the topic

• The skill you are learning e.g. whether learning this topic will still help you meet your wider goals or do you need to change to learning a different skill.

Adjust goals, decision-making rules, strategies and mental models in the light of experience.
If you are having trouble meeting your goals then instead of beating your head against the wall, look at why you are pursuing that goal. It is probably part of a larger goal. If you can not make progress on the original goal perhaps you can make progress in the larger goal by taking a different approach.

The 5 whys may help you identify the larger goal. are you concentrating on the drills or the holes?

This is why the pivot is popular in the startup culture.

The Pivot

If there is a lack of enthusiasm for the product by potential customers or an inability to translate enthusiasm to willingness to pay, they will change the product, the type of product, how they sell the product, who they sell it to or the business model.
This willingness to reassess fundamental assumptions is an example of double loop learning.

Double Loop Learning in My Own Career

The Case of the Endless Iterations

Note:

• a sprint or iteration is a fixed period or timebox which developers use to help plan their work (it is usually 1 to 4 weeks)
• a backlog is a todo list of work items used for planning
• a burndown chart shows how quickly work items are getting done.

One of the teams I was coaching was having three problems

1. They kept abandoning work items they had committed to during backlog refinement and sprint planning, changing their minds from sprint to sprint about the backlog.
2. They were accomplishing work at the start and end of sprints but nothing was happening in the middle.
3. They kept on wanting to extend the sprint, claiming they had not finished the work.

In summary they were bad at starting the sprint, they were bad at ending the sprint and they were bad at maintaining focus during the sprint. Although the team had made improvements in many other areas I had not had any luck directly improving the above mentioned three problem areas, so I decided to tackle the problems indirectly. Instead of helping them play the current game I would change the game.

Inspired by eXtreme Programming's recommendation that if you are bad at something you should do it more frequently I convinced them to change the sprint length from two weeks to one week. That may not seem like a big deal but one week sprints can be problem if

1. Your work items are too big, The majority of items should take a day or less with a one week sprint, while you can get way with larger items with a longer sprint.
2. Your sprint ceremonies are inefficient, dragging on, causing you to be bogged down with administrivia
3. Your testing, integration and delivery pipeline has long delays and onerous manual steps, reducing productivity.

Thankful the team had made dramatic improvements in this second trio of issues paving the way for a smooth transition to one week sprints. There was an almost immediate improvement.

1. The team had an easier time predicting what they would do in the next 5 days instead of the next two weeks. Abandoned work items dropped by a factor of twenty.
2. The flat horizonal section in their burndown chart disappeared. They were getting things done throughout the sprint instead of just at the beginning and end.
3. They stopped asking to extend the sprint, because it felt more acceptable and less of a big deal to just add uncompleted work to next weeks sprint. Sprints were less intimidating.

By changing the context I reduced the impact of these weaknesses of the team so they could focus on their strengths.

Articles

• Double loop learning a concept and process for leadership educators
• Double loop learning (Wikipedia)
• The plan–do–check–act cycle (Wikipedia)

Videos

• Double-loop learning: a case study from the front-line

Books

Teaching Smart People How to Learn by Chris Argyris ( Summary Video + Book )

Podcasts

• Goal-Hierarchy (Freakonomics)

Related Posts

• Growth Mindset
• Positive Deviance
• Deliberate Practice
• Goal Setting
• Smoothing the Rough Edges from Life

Growth Mindset

he research of Dr. Carol Dweck shows that people's mindset can have a major effect on their success in life. People with a growth mindset believe that their basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. This belief often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. On the other hand, a fixed mindset can limit learning and personal growth.

Those with a growth mindset see failure as a challenge and criticism as an opportunity to learn. In contrast, people with a fixed mindset view failure as a disaster and criticism as a personal attack.

People with a growth mindset show grit and keep going when faced with setbacks. But those with a fixed mindset often take early difficulties as proof that their dreams are not achievable.

A growth mindset leads people to view others’ success as a source of inspiration, while a fixed mindset may lead to jealousy or envy.

Those with a fixed mindset often feel the need to prove themselves—to show that they are one of the few with true talent. In comparison, people with a growth mindset believe that success is simply a matter of time and effort.

So, ask yourself: Do you believe you’re stuck with the hand you were dealt, or do you believe that talent, intelligence, and ability can grow through hard work? Changing your mindset might be the first step toward improving your life.

Articles

• Growth mindset for coaches and managers
• 6 Tips to Help Students Develop a Growth Mindset in the Classroom
• Fixed vs. Growth: Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives
• Improve your coaching skills with a growth mindset
  

Videos

• Video explaining fixed mindset vs growth mindset
• The Growth Mindset Video | Carol Dweck | Talks at Google
• The power of believing that you can improve | Carol Dweck

Books

Mindset by Carol S. Dweck ( Summary Video + Book )

Grit by Angela Duckworth ( Summary Video + Book )

Related Posts

• Positive Deviance
  
• Double Loop Learning
  
• Deliberate Practice
  
• Goal Setting

Goal Setting

t is that time of year where people make New Year's resolutions. 

These resolutions are easy to make, but much harder to keep.

So how can you build habits that actually last?

There has been quite a bit of research on this topic in recent years. I’ve found three methods particularly helpful: MCII, Hope Theory, and Atomic Habits. These approaches all share common themes—optimism, planning, and breaking goals down into smaller steps. They don’t contradict each other; in fact, they complement one another. The authors even refer to each other’s work, showing that they are aware of the connections between their ideas.

Below, I’ll go over each method in turn:

Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions

MCII  also known as WOOP , is a practical technique for changing habits and behaviour. It involves four steps:

1. Wish – Choose a goal you want to achieve.

2. Outcome – Visualise how it will feel to achieve that goal.

3. Obstacle – Identify the internal or external obstacles that might get in the way.

4. Plan – Make if-then plans. For example: If I face obstacle A, then I will do behavior B.

Videos

• Video explanation of MCII aka WOOP.

Books

Rethinking Positive Thinking by G.Oettingen ( Summary Video + Book )

Hope Theory

Prof. Snyder breaks his advice into three components.

1. Goals – Set goals that are specific, measurable and with a clear deadline.
2. Pathways – Plan multiple ways to reach your goal. If one path doesn’t work, use double loop learning to adapt.  
3. Agency – Build confidence and maintain motivation through optimism and agrowth mindset. This helps develop grit  and persistence, which are essential for success. 

Videos

• Hope Theory Session with Dr. Christian Wandeler

Books

Psychology of Hope  by C.R. Snyder ( Summary Video + Book )

Handbook of Hope by C.R. Snyder ( Book )

Atomic Habits

James Clear outlines his method through what he calls The Four Laws of Behavior Change. According to him, a habit should be:

1. Obvious – Link the habit to a specific time, place, or situation so it can be triggered easily.

2. Easy – Break the habit down into small, manageable steps.

3. Attractive – Connect the habit with a reward to make it appealing.

4. Satisfying – Track your progress. Turn the habit into a game to keep it fun and motivating.

These three approaches offer useful strategies for creating lasting habits. By combining them, you can improve your chances of sticking to your resolutions and making meaningful changes.

Book

Atomic Habits by James Clear ( Summary Video + Book )

Related Posts

• Growth Mindset
  
• Positive Deviance
  
• Double Loop Learning
  
• Deliberate Practice

Deliberate Practice (Part 1) The Case of the Shut In Drummer

Table of Contents

The Case of the Shut In Drummer (this part)

• Introduction
• Deliberate Practice In Music
• More Information

The Case of the Test First Developer (Part 2)

• Deliberate Practice In Software Development
• More Information

ntroduction

Mindless repetition does not count as deliberate practice as without focused attention and narrow specific and detailed goals it is easy to repeat your mistakes instead of improving your performance. Deliberate practice needs to be purposeful and systematic. 

I will describe two examples of deliberate practice, one as a musician and one as a developer. You will see that there are commonalities in strategies and techniques that are independent of  discipline. 

Deliberate Practice In Music

The Case of the Shut In Drummer

I knew a drummer once who took a year off to practice his drumming. He sacrificed his income and drove his poor wife to distraction. After a year he was no better than when he started. 

So what did he do wrong? 

Small vs Big Changes

Small frequent commitments are generally easier to keep and stay focused during than big one-off commitments. I practice my bass 15 minutes a day plus a couple of longer sessions a week. Maintaining focus for an entire year is unrealistic. If I wanted to increase my commitment to music I would gradually increase the length and frequency of my sessions rather than make radical changes that are hard to maintain. 

Spaced Repetitions

For memorization activities, few repetitions each day for most of a week is more effective than 20 repetitions in a single day (Cramming). Anki is a useful app for enabling spaced repetitive memorization.

Feedback 

Frequent and constant feedback is essential for practice. The only people listening to the drummer were non-musicians, his long suffering family. As well as giving feedback, practice partners can provide social pressure to maintain practice, as well as making practice far more enjoyable. Teaching music to my daughters and playing with them is a major factor in maintaining my bass practice. That and the fact that it is fun and great for stress relief. 

Specific vs General

Narrowing your focus by breaking down what you're doing into the smallest possible parts and aspects, and focusing on each part individually rather than merely having a vague desire to improve is essential. Without this it is easy to simply practice the errors you are making like the unfortunate drummer. Constantly changing the aspect you are trying to improve helps with the next point. 

Variety

Keeping things fresh is essential. If your practice is monotonous then it is almost certain that you will go off on a tangent in order to take a break. In this case, psychology professor and author Angela Duckworth, advises to substitute nuance for novelty. In one practice session I may concentrate on alternate fingering and in another I may concentrate on timing and feel. In one practice session I may concentrate on my fretting hand and in another I may concentrate on my plucking hand. In this way I maintain focus without getting bored as well as making small maintainable improvements in all aspects of my playing. 

Careful and Patient

It is also essential to be slow and meticulous in order to practice the correct way rather than practice making errors. I usually practice with either a metronome or a backing. When learning a new song I will often set the metronome or backing to 0.75x speed then slowly increase the speed over the course of the practice until its 1.5x speed then slowly adjust it back to 1x speed. It is important to practice without errors. It is also important to practice at the edge of your abilities.

More Information

Related Posts

• Growth Mindset
  
• Positive Deviance
  
• Double Loop Learning
• Goal Setting
• Online Resources for Software Developers
• Deliberate Practice In Software Development

Articles

• Deliberate Practice: What It Is and How to Use It by James Clear

Videos

• Deliberate Practice Video - Achieve Mastery in Anything
• Spaced Repetition Video
  

Books

Peak by Anders Ericsson ( Summary Video  + Book )

Deep Work by Cal Newport ( Summary Video + Book )

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin ( Summary Video + Book )

The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle ( Summary Video + Book )

The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy (  Summary Video + Book )

Mastery by Robert Greene (  Summary Video  +  Book )

The Practicing Mind by Thomas M. Sterner ( Summary Video + Book )