Using a hammer

Have you ever seen Canada's Worst Handyman?  I must admit that I am all thumbs, but, even so, I'm better than these guys.  There are lots of things to look at in this show because so many of the items can be translated into almost any occupation, including the IT field.  One of my favorite things is watching the people, when confronted with a screw, pick up their hammer.  Or using any one of a dozen other tools in the wrong way.

IT people have the same tendency.  We have a problem.  We have a tool.  We try to solve the problem with the tool, regardless of whether or not it is the right tool for the job.  Sometimes you have no tool, just a problem, and in that case almost any help is worth the effort.  Well, maybe not.  Sometimes the effort that the tool saves is totally outweighed by the costs associated with using the tool.  Much like a carpenter that has a plethora of tools to help him do his job, IT people have a variety of tools to help them as well.  Our problem is that there is no simple guide saying "for this problem use this tool and for this problem use this tool".

That's not to say that if we had such a guide people would actually use it.  I mean, look at Canada's Worst Handyman, they were taught certain things and still ignored what was taught.  I have no fear that even if we told people to do X they would still end up doing Y.

I'm not restricting myself to just tools, but methodologies as well.  Some people grab on to a methodology and use it like a life preserver.  Not necessarily a wise thing.  An all or nothing approach is inevitably a bad thing.  Even the Agile Methodology that people either hate or love (there we go with extremes again) understands this.  One of it's principles is:

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly.

Essentially, you evaluate what you are doing and adjust if necessary.  I guess my biggest fear is the life preserver mentality for methodologies.  A methodology is a tool and proper use of the tool depends upon proper understanding of the problem.  We sometimes adopt methodologies because they are "cool" or have the "agile" word somewhere in the title.  We don't always understand the problems that we are trying to solve with the methodology and are just so thrilled with using a new tool that we overlook some of the challenges that we have with the tool.

Don't get me wrong, I love new tools, but how many times have you ever used a new tool incorrectly the first time.  If you are going to make a big leap to a new methodology/tool, make sure that you've tested it first and that it actually solves the problems that you need solved.