A brief review and analysis of events

One of the most interesting things that has happened recently was that the hammer phone's scheduled data for the cat was magnified three times times artificially, and the official explanation given by Ali is:

Just back in the long vacation. The first day, the system calls a data port, accidentally the front page Dynamic Data display to the "Qing 0"!!! Zero！ ! Does the front desk want to show "appointment of 0 people"? It's not science!

The anxious siege lions are stepping up their repair of the faulty data interface. In order to make the reservation data as realistic as possible, a volunteer front-end program ape made an extremely unscientific decision-the number of new appointments from October 8 to be "multiplied by three" so that the latter can be quickly approximated to real data ...

The interesting thing about this is that if it is a process, it can at least be explained that Ali's development is in a state of control in this project. The main reason for this is not that there are errors, because all software is wrong, but the error is so low.

In order to better understand the meaning of this matter, we need to introduce a little bit about software development.

In order to organize so many programmers to work hard and avoid defects as much as possible, the software industry has a lot of practices and methods to improve the productivity and quality of software, such as continuous integration, peer review, unit testing, etc. Peer review says one person is done, the other person wants to help with the view; The test contains more specific tools, such as unit testing of test program logic, static testing of test syntax, functional testing of test functions, and continuous integration, which emphasizes the regression testing of small changes on a daily basis to detect problems in a timely manner.

Different software because the required quality is not the same, so the requirements for the development and testing of such links will be different, such as the development of life-or-death medical software, it may be necessary to test every logic, and constantly return, and troupes may not do the test, the typical function of testing is over, Take a chance on the rest if you can use it.

And the reason for this is that Ali's mistake is very low because this mistake is actually a quality control can be found in advance of the problem, only completely do not do quality control, the development of code immediately online workshop is easy to make this mistake.

Perhaps this is only a small probability of accidental events, and does not explain what the problem is Ali, but to emphasize that if software development continues in such a state, in fact it means that software development has lost control.

The story behind Runaway control

Kelly once wrote a very famous book called "Out of Control", the book mentions some of the laws of creation, such as courtesy error, do not seek the best goal, but for many goals, to the central and so on.

Many of the things mentioned in this book have been fulfilled on the Internet, so many people think this is a new story, but it is not, this kind of runaway and control choice actually profoundly affects our history.

The Western Han Dynasty when the school of Yellow and Confucianism had a fierce PK, and ultimately appearance alone Confucianism end. "Moral sutra" Inside said: People, Law, Heaven, Heaven, DAO, Tao Natural. According to this idea to go down is necessarily inaction, inaction is not stressed control, let its natural. But Confucianism is not this idea, Confucian pay attention to: For heaven and earth, a life for the people, for the knowledge, for the eternal peace. This way of thinking will inevitably need to make a meritorious, actively exert human initiative, transformation of Nature, create history, this is control.

Give up control and active control PK to modern times again in economics, this is the competition between the market and planning. mapping to the internal enterprise, that is the recent rise of the management model of the dispute.

The word management is being divided by runaway control.

There is a very different kind of book called "New Science and Leadership", the book cover is written "Newton killed management", what this book wants to say is that Newton also represents a worldview, a mechanical worldview that eventually spawned Taylor-style management, and so far the idea has been rigorously enforced in factories such as Foxconn. This production line is undoubtedly the extreme embodiment of control, where the possibility of runaway is suppressed to the minimum.

The corresponding to the production line is the research institute, you do not have a clear definition of Einstein such people to do what and control, they must enjoy autonomy.

This makes things more obvious, the strict control of the time will be rigid, not strict control when the overall direction will be blurred.

Software development is in the middle of a more awkward position, it can not be biased in favor of the factory, and can not be biased towards the laboratory. At first, people tried to repeat the development of high-quality software in a tightly controlled way, but the effect is not good, a key reason is that people's subjective will have a fatal effect on the outcome, Foxconn can make the iphone, but not design the iphone, and for the software it is more like a design work, Rather than manufacturing jobs. This makes people-oriented methodologies begin to appear, such as agile, which is often referred to. But in this way, everyone needs to be a center, with more and more autonomy, and the overall situation tends to get out of control.

The bigger the company, the more obvious the swing between control and Runaway Ali if the strict development process, it will not happen this time, but it may lead to widespread rigidity and inefficiency, if the decentralization, then a little more than a boundary becomes all things by the parties to self-determination, similar to this thing will happen.

This control and uncontrolled struggle is not limited to Ali or software, Baidu has called the promotion of wolves, the elimination of petty bourgeoisie can also be seen as a symptom of this struggle. When the company wants to do things, must be proactive, integration of internal strength, and in order to achieve this goal, it must be the company will replace the individual will, when the two are inconsistent, this is control, as the process, evaluation and so are the means.

If we have to make a conclusion, we can speak out of control and create life to maintain the diversity of the world, but control itself creates reality and history. The harmony between the two is very desirable, but in the short run the possibility of implementation is relatively low.

The business

This topic is very easy to ideology, but it is dangerous, so we confine the discussion to the internal enterprise.

Reality actually gives the enterprise a difficult problem.

High-frequency changes in fact require companies to make rapid decisions and focus on power, but the need for specialization in turn requires the decentralization of sufficient autonomy to field personnel.

Zhou, in describing his point of view, said: "When you're pushing an elephant, you can't actually push it, but if you stick it in a needle, it moves immediately." But he didn't mention it. In fact, this requires more stringent control in order to integrate the strength of the team into a needle. The entrepreneurial team basically needs to face this problem, must be autocratic to consolidate the strength, the formation of a needle, but also must be democratic to make the needle has a sustained momentum without disintegration. Because the entrepreneurial team time is limited, the need for advanced skills for rapid integration, this challenge is too high, so the end will often simply degenerate into yiyantang. Appearance is directed toward the front, the interior appears all kinds of fire or split up.

These contradictions are hard to solve, but they can be alleviated.

In people, it is necessary to find people with cognitive convergence to form a team, when starting a business, especially to find partners in the cognitive convergence of decision-making mechanisms. As the core personnel should constantly improve their own perspective and cognitive ability, and strive to improve their own persuasion, rather than simply brute force others to agree.

In the system, while the delegation of authority is greatly delegated, efforts are made to shape a universally accepted value concept. The runaway of nature is under the rule of runaway, and people with independent consciousness, the organization of runaway can easily become uncontrolled. The universally accepted values are in fact tantamount to establishing a rule in the heart of man. This rule must first be universally accepted, and then be able to be eliminated in time. The specific form of examples please refer to: Let the software company's management a little more "soul."

In engineering, we need to build a development process that can be scaled according to people and things.

Concluding

If it is further developed, this is the true methodology, which is a very grand topic. But all that is done is simple: pursue a balance between runaway and absolute control, maximizing the power that an organization can erupt. This is more difficult, but it is really a leading or management must face the problem.