​I invite meditation on the Agile manifesto today: http://agilemanifesto.org/​

Let's discuss a word that is safely tucked away in the management lexicon.

Program :

It means: a collection of projects. Even a series of tv shows on a channel, could be considered a program. Why not? A bunch of tv show episodes are unique projects that are produced and aired according to a TV outlet's programming schedule and criteria.

As you do more projects, you learn more, you re-plan, both at the project level, and at the program level. Planning is a focal aspect of project work. It's even a continual improvement endeavor. Plans improve the future work, especially when they observe variance between "planned and actual" work. Work is a circular game with twists, checkpoints, stoppages, and some work calves off projects and becomes a full-fledged project in its own right. 

Would you consider features to be projects, or too small to be a project? I don't think it matters. But, you might agree "feature" sounds smaller than "project". What about a "program", is that equivalent to a collection of similar features, that are developed for a product / program, what about a set of "epics".

Responding to change over following a plan.

Agile liberates managers from the anxiety or security of knowing everything ahead of time, and plan most of the work ahead of time. Perhaps there is a misconception about the current body of knowledge in project management. The need to re-plan comes up a lot, updates are a natural update of the management process.

I would like to ask Agile managers, at the start, aren't you doing most of the planning the deliverable ahead of time, following the plan in some cases, at least to deliver what you are trying to deliver?

The learning is valuable, but the essential qualities of the deliverables, that is the work they perform nary changes, though the code and structure envisioned for that code may not look the same as it did from the outset. Perhaps there is no code at all!

I'd like to invite our attention back to this statement, Responding to change over following a plan. 

Let's not forget about the value of planning, which is an interactive process, valuing people's ideas, attention, and the integrity of what the team is trying to deliver. We plan for change, not for compliance to a plan!

A school that values people before standards, curricula, time, metrics and other numbers designed to make kids conform.

A school that values self-exploration before pre-determined roles.

A school that is an un-school, which lets kids devote as much time as they need to subjects of their interests. Over time they will learn the lesson that there is a trade-off between time spent on many things versus the depth you gain when you focus on one thing or goal.

Where would this school be that keeps kids learning safely, under a model that we are seeing work for kids and adults alike, whether in ground-breaking new schools or re-imagined workplaces.

Planning my study sessions, using memorization best practices, and recalling my bootcamp instructor Sandy's advice gave me nerves of steel for the exam questions that left me split between two or more questions. I received an "above target" passing grade on the PMP exam, yesterday, and I marked nearly a quarter of the questions to review at the end. One mantra I took with me is if you don't know it (for sure), "Mark it and move on."

I would not have had the discipline to study for the exam without the combination of the PMISFBAC bootcamp + forming a study habit, of one hour per day in the weekday mornings.

PMP Study Timeline​

January-July: Master of Project materials used during 3-4 months. Took the quizzes at end of each section. Online videos were somewhat laborious to get through, and I'd say this was not the most impactful study over the course of 2017. I kept my subscription for 5-6 months.

September: 4-day PMIBAC PMP bootcamp and accompanying Andy Crowe Pass on Your First Try book materials

• ditched the Master of Project materials from the bootcamp onward,
• focused the first 2-3 weeks straight after bootcamp to complete the short Andy Crowe exams at end of each chapter, and reading the book. Right after the bootcamp is when to form a strict study habit!
• Focused on my weaker quiz results which I logged in a tracking spreadsheet 
• Conversations audio on the processes, with approximately one knowledge area to study per week.
• Velociteach flashcards for one knowledge area to the café near my house - Nomad Café, highly recommend it! Used this time to remember key ITTOs and processes.

October: Having reached my exam eligibility, I scheduled my exam for December, a Monday at 1pm, when I figured I'd be most refreshed.

• I used my early mornings 630-730 to go through flashcards or the Crowe book
• Took the timed test in the Crowe book, reviewing questions I got wrong and the explanations
• on my BART commutes I would drill by answering practice questions on my phone using the PMP Practice Test 2017 Edition Android app. I set a timer so I made sure I wasn't taking too long per question. Careful craning your neck though while studying this way! Over the course of two months I had answered probably over 50% of the question in the app. You can get a ton of practice this way on the go.
• At the suggestion of a fellow bootcamp student I also installed the PMP ITTO Android app, whose questions and centralization of the knowledge came in handy for my commute study sessions.
• Re-tested on only the questions I got wrong in the Crowe book practice test, again reviewing the rationale from the answer key

November: I took most timed practice tests in this month

• Got onto Velociteach website and entered Crowe test code, took some mini-tests and a longer test, trying to improve on my results..
• By end of November I had read through Crowe book, and started reading the book's glossary.
• Started reading the PMBOK glossary also, and reviewed some sections of interest and diagrams to get a bigger picture view of the process flow.

​December: purchased Practice Test B through Velociteach

• Reviewed the common ITTOs (inputs, tools/techniques, outputs), For OPA, PM plan and EEF, it is helpful to note when they are or are not used, depending how common they are.
• I started practicing mini-brain dumps with mnemonic devices taught in the Velociteach materials, i.e. binder received from bootcamp. I recommend reviewing your notes in the binder, and regurgitating the key ITTOs on paper, one process at a time, perhaps focus on one per day
• Reviewed questions I got wrong and the explanations - perhaps I was tired and the late afternoon was not a good time to test. This was not the score I hoped to get and I became a bit stressed the week leading up to the test
• I focused on the areas that needed work by taking my notepad and writing the flow of inputs, tools and techniques and outputs through the process, sometimes writing the same process over again to solidify memory.

Other Tips:

• Practice the brain dump a few times before entering the exam, even if it's a slim list of things to remember
• Remember how you plan to budget your time. If it helps, when moving to each question, try to hold yourself to 30-45 seconds per question, using two 5-10 breaks during the exam. This is not possible for all questions, like those that require diagramming or calculation.

ON THE REAL EXAM

• Took the Prometric tutorial at the beginning before exam started.
• Over course of exam, marked a staggering 40-50 questions, which I wrapped up at the end of the exam, only leaving 2 minutes to spare. On some of the questions, I ended up selecting answers I had struck out with the right click mouse button, so careful with that strike-out function!

• My "Previous" button stopped working after like question 50. Later in the exam, I went to "Review", returned to my place, and the "Previous" button was back. I reported this to Prometric.
• My results said I earned "Above Target" in all process areas except "Close", which was at "Target".

What's next? I want to learn and grow more, and make a better working world. am also keen to finish a few more episodes of Westworld and getting back to practicing guitar and learning music.

Simply choosing to undertake the study required to prepare for this test is a milestone for me,. I embraced the hours of study that helped me to reverse an abhorrence of tests, or the practice of affixing letters to my name. I am excited for the formalization and advancement of my work over the past several years

I feel my experience and memorized concepts are aiding me to deliver the best score possible and I accept the result at the end, good or bad.

Whatever happens, I know what will come out of this is usage and practice of the PMP concepts and techniques in my career. There is no single test that grades my performance as a project leader in day-to-day life. I think the test is a practical means of prescribing best practices, and the certification is a contract to do the work right. The PMP is only a trophy as far as passing the test goes, the other side of it is a responsibility: a contract to do work according to the standard.

Fire, is so elemental to our everyday lives. I don't ask it why it heats our homes, our food, or why it ignites the bulbs that light our path through dark. I don't ask it to justify its existence.

I do ask why we don't do more to prepare for climate disasters, as we know their nature, we understand human nature to cause these willingly and unwillingly.

Our habits get in the way of common sense, even if these habits help move us toward safety in a different way, earning money at a safe office job., couldn't that too get in the way of being safe at home?

Playing fast well requires a gradual ramp up in speed in manageable intervals from slow and steady, to fast and steady. This is what I've done for a few flamenco guitar techniques like rasgueo and picado runs, inspired by well-worn teaching methodologies. Pick up the book The Musician's Way, or read the Musician's Way blog if you get a chance.

How do you ramp up the speed without sacrificing quality of sound, tone, attack? Here's a little trick to do that when you work technique into your practice schedule.

Let's assume you've isolated a hurdle you are trying to work past, which to you is a problem related to speed, but could in fact be masking an underlying technical problem that needs to be worked into your muscles, strengthening them at a slower speed.

Find how you want to fit the speedy riff that was difficult into the metronome's time: 3/4, 4/4, etc.

Start at a comfortable speed on the metronome, probably somewhere under 100 bpm

Play the riff at least 5-10 times on the <100 bpm speed, listening to any inaccuracy of execution.
Speed up 10 bpm, play same thing 5-10 times, speed up 10 bpm, play the same, speed up 10 bpm play the same.

Take a break and put it down, or come back to it later. This should envigorate your practice, not wear it out. 

What brings us back home?

This eternal questions always comes knocking on my skull, when I feel a certain rush to go back home, see my friends, hang out at my house, escape my house (which is just my parents' house now) walk across the seconds and be at my friends in a second, protected from the crush of criticism, parental guidance, and the silence and peace, which is my protector, but also troubling in a way -- being tucked away in a peaceful, quite place is something bizarre to me, an illusion, the impossible becoming real?

I look from parents yard at half the city and more, all the way toward Redondo Beach, lands I've visited but never stayed more than a night or two at friends' houses. Nobody over there would have me anymore.

It's a long trip anywhere in the city, but its millions of residences and microneighborhoods are like a feudal retreat from the anything goes anywhere of San Francisco, where seemingly you can't escape the madness, the madmen, the visionaries, the traffic, anywhere. You're always a few steps from the grittiness of the street. LA offers little retreats where vagabonds and madmen can't get you, stalk you to your doorstep, I suppose.

Making it is getting out of the rush, but not being so isolated as to forget people or let them forget you. If I could build something that assures people can dream: musical collaboration, community, friendships, I want to make this happen. If I do, I will have come out on top, leaving the rush not to escape, but to build something great.

We don't often separate the mechanisms of our political system with our economic system. They prop up each other up, Capitalism doesn't need democracy for itself to function, so what is the new global order?

The natural environment is our commons, belonging to all of us, but decided by no one person; it is "the ground of our being".

How will intellectual property be used in this management of the commons?

Zizek struggles with the concept of freedom. He proposes we are now in a social context where we are less and less free, despite the options provided to us to consume. Our economic coordinates are being decided in secret.

Ecological consumption choices are our fundamental duty. These duties, these suggestions are ridiculous, I agree with Zizek. However, does that mean we need to be alienated from them, from choices that suggest we are in control? This is not a way to confront major catastrophes, however, perhaps it is a step to aligning people toward supporting such a solution top-down.

Do we need to a ruling ecological ideology to manage large scale systems. Ecology as religion, Zizek asserts has made each one of us culpable, but we are in no way prepared to react to culpability, especially as consumers.

Now, Malabou.

Uncertainty of ecological catastrophe defines our transition to it. Anthropocene situates us between nature and history, we are the subject of the history, conscious of our destruction, but the anthropocene is as "stonelike" as geological reality itself, so Malabou combines this consciousness of the paradox as the definition of this error of logical, irreflexivity.

Who is the man of the anthropocene? There is a "rupture in reflexivity" here that Malabou considers to be central to our experience in corraling our experience in a changing system.

Achievement, and telos. Work to get somewhere or some thing. (I'm going to avoid bringing up 'ego' and associated guilt PSA.)

Where does it start? Ego builds the individual? Knowledge from an individual builds those around her?

After a few weeks of life, we start separating the world from the 'I'.

In our teen years we rebel. We say I am not a possession of anything or anyone. Our parents cringe.

Revolution.

Is this separation what puts humans into an achievement mindset? The itch and scratch to do, do more, then do less, repeating viciously, insatiably. To perform some work that proves our utility, or more specifically proves that the 'I' is a valuable entity on its own (as if that was something that needed to be proved out). Also, there are other parts of the 'me' story that reinforce our self-value, which again, has an appetite for proving itself worthy, at least of our attention: we wear nice clothes, commute to work, buy nice things, carefully choose and groom social circles..

Now, achievement is quite a fascinating thing in these times. We once had the convenience of looking at our creations as future-proof. As we enhanced our ability to look out into the world and predict, we also saw its limits.

Is 'Agile' nihilistic? Its openness to changing requirements, respecting the limits of our ability to see past the here and now, is a perfect for the software world, in a world where the certainty of Moore's law's means your code cannot be future proofed, it will have to be rewritten.

Our environment is not static, thus our plans must be fluid if we are to achieve anything in a fluid setting.

Small changes have been around for some time, by nature. We see evidence of evolution everywhere. It is more than a way of life, I would argue it is the way of life.

The constant judgment peppering every personal decision, when to wake up, what to eat, who to speak to, feeling guilt about everything I did, or more likely, didn't do, wore me down. I chose to abandon deciding good and bad. Things just are the way they are, and we are stuck in language that forces our habits. We change ever so slightly, by our own will or outside influence.

I started recently abandoning sources of self-judgment, thoughts about everyone but me doing something fun, a tyranny of "doing more fun shit than you" kind of society was a nagging curseword that I'd blame myself for. I'd blame myself for not having all the fun I thought people were having. That is a good one, an old pestering bitch.

Another was me getting riled up because of casual monitoring of global news outlets, which just recently crept back in because of something a co-worker said, causing shivers of worry in me, and who wouldn't it worry, the threat of a nuclear fuckshow threatens to bring the stability that has been in my life, for my whole life to the end. [Me, a knowledge slave, what did I do to deserve this?]

On Saturday, I go to Japan, where I hope to understand something about the customs, and grace of the society, how it may feel to be Japanese is another story. How or why would I possibly identify, just as I may be personally inhibited to envision myself as a German, or person of African descent, or anywhere, but where I'm from, I suppose. It was on a whim, this decision to go. I like to travel and experience rebirth in places, and I want to open up to a friend I am meeting there. When love gets closer, I get scared I'll open up too much, and end up in a hole of my own judgment. I feel so close to personal tragedy crawling through a loveless desert of work, and now I am nearing a place of tragedy, awe and overcoming, in Japan.

The geopolitical tension growing in that area and my recovery from self-hate converging is so much amplification of this life than I ever thought I could experience, and it is a liberation of these worries, and there is something empty that's left. It is peaceful. I stand on the train contemplating peace in the morning, and the way other people stand, and we go underground and we aren't scared, we may be tired, and think same weary thoughts.

Traveling puts me into a subconscious version of myself, in a way it unleashes a powerful way of being, an uninhibited forgetting myself, a benign delight in "survival", mimicry of what travel once was for explorers, traders, people under the spell of a crusade, a conviction, distilled into simple sharing via sign language with locals. The sheer grace and simplicity of conversation, an affirmation that we are 1+1=2 is closure.

I want closure on a past chapter of life, of fear, and would even risk being closer to a potential war to get there.