Developers Need To Fight The Fight They Can Win
Avoid losing situations
“He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.” Sun Tzu
Fight the battle you can win and don’t fight the battle you cannot win. Bill Belichick (legendary) coach of the New England Patriots, tries to make make teams play left handed, he creates tactics to take away their strengths.
Avoid situations and environments that put development teams in a situation they can’t win and increase the chance of failure. Developers should consider this for their career and avoid getting stuck on dead end projects.
“The wise warrior avoids the battle.” Sun Tzu
Developers need to fight the battle they can win and create software in an environment they have a chance of creating the software on time.
Assassins creed
“Be where your enemy is not.” Sun Tzu
I was watching my son play assassins creed. He was one person hiding who had to assassinate a person who was heavily guarded. As the name of the game implies, the ideal strategy is to sneak in and assassinate the target.
I watched as many times as my son’s single warrior tried to beat 30 or 50 guards in a mass fight.
It started off well. He would get past a few, and then an alarm would go off and 30 guards would come and he slowly got overwhelmed. To evaluate, you would say he did well, beat 20 guards but each time he lost.
Eventually, he had to change strategy and learn to sneak up to the target without triggering the alarm. My son learnt he had the advantage when his character wasn’t suspected and he could fight the person one at a time.
In Taekwondo we sometimes practice one person fighting multiple. A similar principle applies. One person fighting three people increases the odds of losing. Fighting three people at once gives your opponents the advantage. You are fighting a battle where your opponents have the advantage because of the tactics you choose to use.
The correct strategy when you are one is to move around so you put one enemy in front of the others. This results in you only fighting one person at a time. This is a more even fight. You are fighting a fight, you have a chance of winning.
Stephen Curry — Underrated
“One mark of a great soldier is that he fight on his own terms or fights not at all.” Sun Tzu
I was watching the Apple documentary Stephen Curry called underrated. Stephen Curry is only 6 feet 2 inches, which is small for a basketball player.
If Stephen Curry had played basketball in the same way as everyone else, he would have lost. He was smaller, weaker, and not fast. If Curry had played basketball in the same way as taller players, he would have been fighting a war he couldn’t win.
Curry would have been fighting in a style that suited tall players and he would have been outgunned and never made it to the NBA.
Curry played a different game, a game that suited his physical attributes. He mastered long range shooting and scoring 3 pointers. Curry’s strategy is to get enough space to shoot and shoot a 3 pointer.
Size isn’t important when you are shoot 3 pointers. The additional benefit is 3 pointers get you an extra point for every basket. Not only did this approach suit his height, but it enabled Curry to score more and score faster.
Everywhere Curry played, he broke the 3 point scoring record. He is now the leading 3 point scorer in the NBA.
- 7× NBA three-point field goals leader: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2021, 2022
- 2× NBA scoring leader: 2016, 2021
- 4× NBA champion: 2015, 2017, 2018, 2022
- NBA Finals MVP: 2022
- 2× NBA Most Valuable Player: 2015, 2016
Curry fought the war he could win and transformed the NBA at the same time. This wasn’t an accident. When Curry was younger, he and his father discussed how Curry should approach basketball if he wanted to be successful.
David Beckham
David Beckham was a right sided midfielder. Often footballers who play on the right or left are tricky wingers, who are fast and skilful. They cause havoc by dribbling past defenders and cause defenders to leave their man to tackle them.
David Beckham was not fast or tricky and rarely dribbled past anyone.
Beckham focused on being a dead ball specialist. He practiced free kicks, corners and crossing. Beckham used his strengths of fitness, attitude, teamwork and focus on practicing.
Beckham because one of the biggest players in the world, won lots of titles at Man Utd, transferred to Real Madrid and was a captain of his country.
Beckham fought the war he could win and used a style that suited his skills, character, physical attributes and made himself successful.
Software Development
“Who wishes to fight must first count the cost.” Sun Tzu
What does this all mean for software developers? How do software developers fight the fight they can win?
- What are developers good at?
They are good at creating software?
- What are developers not good at?
Meetings, people leadership, presentations and other consultant type work.
Software developers should spend more time creating software and less time in meetings and doing other activities. Do more of what they are good at and less at what they are weak in.
Software development should be done by aiming to create quality at a steady rate. Steady progress and good development processes are where software developers are strongest.
Where developers are weak is if they are rushing without clear requirements and where the project has poor understanding of the business.
Individual developers should think about their strengths and what roles/responsibilities would suit those strengths. I was a C#/Java developer for over 10 years. I’m a solution architect with technical experience (so I can tell when developers are talking nonsense). This gives me different strengths to solution architects who don’t have the technical background.
Other strength are I leadership/people skills, working on large projects and communicating. These are areas developers are weak in. I take roles that suit my strengths.
Conclusions
Understanding developers' strength and weaknesses and your own should be a filter you used to decide what projects you work on and what role you take.
Many times I have seen good people's struggle in a role that wasn’t suited to them. I saw one person go from almost being fired from the company (as a tester) to get multiple promotions (in a developer role).
Software development is hard. If you work in a role that doesn’t suit your skills, knowledge and experience, then you are making it even harder for yourself.
