Slashdot Mirror
The Blind Men and the Elephant
Each participant on a collaborative project encounters a piece of that project, rarely the whole elephant. We grasp whatever we can -- an ear, a tail, a trunk, a leg, a tusk, a broad, flat side. Based on what we grasp (our piece of the project) we extrapolate an understanding of the whole: a fan, a rope, a snake, a tree, a spear, a wall. Schmaltz develops these analogies in terms of project experience. We encounter a fan that brings us fresh air, a rope that binds us together, a snake that abuses our trust, a tree that evolves in structure above and beneath the surface, a spear that puts us on the defensive, a wall that challenges our personal progress. A chapter is devoted to each analogy.
This isn't a storybook, though. These simple metaphors are touchstones for Schmaltz's broad exploration of what makes projects meaningful. Schmaltz sheds light on the dark matter of project management -- the stuff that blocks us from succeeding on projects as individuals and as teams. He even leads us through the panicked self-talk that runs through a manager's head at the start of a project. With rich writing that's rare in management books, Schmaltz gives us a 360-degree view of project management itself -- project management is this book's invisible elephant. The elephant emerges.
You won't find any worksheets, diagrams, flow charts, procedures, instructions, or textbook problems in this book. Schmaltz gives us something more valuable and memorable: fresh ways to think about how we approach and manage projects. For example, managers should encourage each person to find a personal project within each project, something personally "juicy" to sustain interest and make the effort valuable. Going beyond the stated objectives of a project, each of us needs to ask ourself, "What do you want?" -- and to keep asking that until our personal goals emerge. These goals don't compete with the team's purpose -- they bind us to the project's success. This is the process of what Schmaltz calls "finding your wall."
Just as managers should encourage this kind of buy-in rather than try to externally motivate a team, managers should not impose a prefabricated structure onto a team. Schmaltz argues that when people find a personally juicy goal within a project, they will strive to organize their efforts in an efficient, organic manner -- without taking that twenty-volume project methodology off the shelf.
On a person-to-person level, Schmaltz asserts that despite the risk of getting cheated by snake-like deceivers, project members are most wise to interpret people's actions generously, assuming the best and freely offering trust and help. Using the results of a computer programming competition in which the Prisoner's Dilemma was solved by having the imprisoned conspirators refuse to implicate each other, Schmaltz shows that offering trust as a first principle can lead to bigger win-wins, more often.
Schmaltz consults on high-tech projects through his firm, True North project guidance strategies, based in Walla Walla, Washington. He hosts the Heretic's Forum, a Web space designed to "capture dangerously sane ideas." In addition to his periodic newsletter, Compass, he has published one previous book, This Isn't a Cookbook.
That invisible elephant, the powerful analogy at the center of this book, will enrich the way you approach new projects and reconsider problems -- especially the parts of problems that remain invisible to you on current projects. As Schmaltz wishes in a sort of benediction, "May this elephant emerge whenever you engage."
Reviewer David McClintock is president of Wordsupply.com. You can purchase The Blind Men and the Elephant: Mastering Project Work from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Reviewers, please read it. Never use a fifty-cent word when a nickel word will do. This review reads like a bad example of a meaningless corporate business plan. Using the biggest possible word in all possible cases doesn't make you look smart, it just makes you look boring.
I'm sorry, if my teammates are groping, I'm quitting.
All human problem solving (especially the male approach) tends to be a exercise in discovery, generally done by making an approximate solution, testing it against the reality of use, then refining this until it's "good". Different people have different skills in this regard, some are good at overall designs, some at details.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates.
Honestly, I don't really want to picture a bunch of geeks 'groping' around trying to 'reveal' something.
GMD
watch this
Simply put, Schmaltz is saying that your project is an invisible elephant. It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates
Yeah, but how many teams can ge the Governor of California to participate?
Since everyone is going to ask, the female approach is to exchange opinions about the elephant's skin texture, color, smell, etc. until the elephant falls asleep from boredom, upon which point the women can drape the elephant in colorful cloth and decorate it tastefully.
OK, all three female Slashdotters can flame me at once now. I'm ready...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Schmaltz is saying that your project is an invisible elephant. It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates
I thought the analogy was that each blind man felt a different part of the elephant and they couldn't reach a consensus on what it was, since all the parts felt different.
a different elephant analogy is that there is an elephant (a large problem) in the room that no one wants to acknowledge, so that no one has to deal with it.
You see an incredibly stupid slashdot story, and you can't resist clicking on it. Maybe its your natural vulture instinct to look for the weak stories and pounce all over them.
But are you able to avoid posting? Or is simply shouting "WTF!" enough for you?
Score:1, Informative?
This should be funny, I think.
Here's another review on this book.
Here:. html
http://www.wordfocus.com/word-act-blindmen
I don't know how to make a link
The post itself isn't all that amusing - but the fact that it's currently moderated to +1 informative is +23 HILARIOUS.
It's this invisible elephant I will now use and cherish when I don't get my work done. I will not gleefully explain to my CTO when he asks about why routers bork, and systems go down, that - this invisible elephant sir, you don't understand. I don't think you cherish the value of dumping a high salary in my hands without trusting my judgment, and I sir believe in invisible elephants... Now about that raise
MoFscker
Would someone mind pointing out the moral to that story? The best I got was the literal moral, and since I have no thrones I ought to be fine.
Sure, it's nice to think about a book that you "don't need charts or diagrams" for, but for practical help with project management, there's the old standby, Fredrick P. Brooks The Mythical Man Month . That book alone has been the most helpful thing to me at my current job in managing projects, requirements, and all that. This book about an "invisible elephant" may have a cute analogy, but The Mythical Man Month will actually help you out.
Plus, you can probably dig up a used copy of it for super cheap, as appossed to lining some hack author's pockets.
[Reply to This]
I'd just like to point out that's seasoned chicken fat in Yiddish. I hope the book's better...
your project is an invisible elephant. It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates
And people still wonder why programmers all get fired and replaced with marketing people.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
The Blind Men and the Elephant
by John Godfrey Saxe
American poet John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) based the following poem on a fable which was told in India many years ago.
It was six men of Indostan / To learning much inclined, / Who went to see the Elephant / (Though all of them were blind), / That each by observation / Might satisfy his mind
The First approached the Elephant, / And happening to fall / Against his broad and sturdy side, / At once began to bawl: / "God bless me! but the Elephant / Is very like a wall!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk, / Cried, "Ho! what have we here / So very round and smooth and sharp? / To me 'tis mighty clear / This wonder of an Elephant / Is very like a spear!"
The Third approached the animal, / And happening to take / The squirming trunk within his hands, / Thus boldly up and spake: / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a snake!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand, / And felt about the knee. / "What most this wondrous beast is like / Is mighty plain," quoth he; / " 'Tis clear enough the Elephant / Is very like a tree!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear, / Said: "E'en the blindest man / Can tell what this resembles most; / Deny the fact who can / This marvel of an Elephant / Is very like a fan!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun / About the beast to grope, / Than, seizing on the swinging tail / That fell within his scope, / "I see," quoth he, "the Elephant / Is very like a rope!"
And so these men of Indostan / Neo dies / Disputed loud and long, / So does Trinity / Each in his own Neo dies opinion / Exceeding stiff and strong, / Though each was partly so does Trinity in the right, / And all were in the wrong!
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars, / The disputants, I ween, / Rail on in utter ignorance / Of what each other mean, / And prate about an Elephant / Not one of them has seen!
In my experience, the customer wanted an elephant (probably because a Fortune article said elephant). They could be quite successful - and more profitable - without the elephant. But the sales guys told them that we know elephants like mad (when, in fact, the developers have only seen elephants from far away - really far away).
Anyhow, the developers keep insisting that the elephant is untenable and deadlines slip. Instead we roll out a beta elephant (which is really just a pile of dung molded to look like an elephant) and ask the client for feedback.
Naturally, the client has no buy in from the folks who are going to be using the elephant, so the change requests start pouring in until, budget exhausted, half the developers have been laid-off. At this point, the pile of dung does not look like an elephant but the client has spent so much money that, ala Emperors New Clothes, everybody marvels at what a great elephant it is. QED.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
Amazon has it for $13.27
Seriously, what a worthless review. It's all fluff and puff, and no actual substance. Next time, try reviewing a book that doesn't talk about "invisible" garbage.
Another of those American books where one look at the title means you don't need to read the book.
I do, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside now. But how exactly does all of this apply to my day-to-day? I'm not sure when it started, but recently there seems to be a proliferation of Commanders of the Obvious who disguise their barely-adequate theories behind some sort of happy analogy. "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" maps roughly to "Boy != Girl". How is it possible that these charlatans continue to prosper? Is it possible that the public is so overly entertained and intellecutally starved that these sort of things are revealations to them?
-theGreater Ranter.
The blind elephant analogy has often been used as a proof for different interpretations of God. One blind man grabs a tail and says this is what an elephant is. Anothing holding the trunk say "You have it all wrong, this is the way it is". Yet another holding the tusk says "You are both wrong, it feels like this". Finally, the Rajah (Indian Price) comes out and asks what the fuss is about. He tells the blind men they are all correct, they just need to put together what they have and they can have a sense of what an elephant is. This also implies that one may possible never fully know what an elephant is. To try to relate by babbling. The elephant (the collaborative project) can never be fully grasped and only through enlightenment or a guru, can we know the truth about the elephant (the collaborative project). This kind of smells like a 90s dot-com theory to me (but then maybe I only have a piece of the elephant! what do I know?) Of course, this analogy is a bit flawed anyway. It assumes there is an elephant (is there really a collaborative project, or do you just pretend there is like George Castanza?). And furthermore, it assumes you can somehow know the whole elephant, or at least know that the elephant is more than you know. This begs the question of how you can know that! Bad analogy, bad application....I don't know about the book, but so far, no good. I'm going to go back to my imaginary elephant (my project at work) because even though it's not real, maybe it will be if I just work hard enough.
Thoughts for the day
DAMN someone has cold hands!
or
Watch were you put those!
or
Who signed me up for this sensitivity training?
or
Is it bigger than a breadbox?
or
Wrinkle cream. Lots of wrinkle cream.
or
Help! Help! Somethings got me!
I can glean one of the universal truths from this article.
If the project is going to father other projects - start other issues and then wanders off leaving you to "take care of them", it is a male. You can then be assured that there's a prick and a couple of nuts on the project team.
If it creates more projects inside itself that it must nurture along until they take on a life of thier own, it is female. There's going to be a cunt and at leats a couple of dumb tits working on it.
In either case, however, there is always an asshole.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
People in glass houses should not throw stones :)) :))
MOD GRANDPARENT UP!!!
standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates
Very very similar to that...
Casual Games/Downloads
Great Story!
This should be modded up though.
Unlike the blind men, the programmers on a given project know what the finished product is supposed to be.
If you know you're building an elephant, and someone hands you the tail...you're not going to think the whole thing looks like a snake. Sorry.
This strikes me as nothing more than a cutesey metaphor laden book for your PHB.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Here is the poem;
The Blind Men and the Elephant
John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887)
It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the Elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.
The First approached the Elephant,
And happening to fall
Against his broad and sturdy side,
At once began to bawl:
"God bless me! but the Elephant
Is very like a WALL!"
The Second, feeling of the tusk,
Cried, "Ho, what have we here,
So very round and smooth and sharp?
To me 'tis mighty clear
This wonder of an Elephant
Is very like a SPEAR!"
The Third approached the animal,
And happening to take
The squirming trunk within his hands,
Thus boldly up and spake:
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a SNAKE!"
The Fourth reached out an eager hand,
And felt about the knee
"What most this wondrous beast is like
Is mighty plain," quoth he:
"'Tis clear enough the Elephant
Is very like a TREE!"
The Fifth, who chanced to touch the ear,
Said: "E'en the blindest man
Can tell what this resembles most;
Deny the fact who can,
This marvel of an Elephant
Is very like a FAN!"
The Sixth no sooner had begun
About the beast to grope,
Than seizing on the swinging tail
That fell within his scope,
"I see," quoth he, "the Elephant
Is very like a ROPE!"
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I just find it amusing that their are both blind folks and invisible elephants in the analogy. Seems to me just blind or invisible would have done by itself.
"Once upon a time, three friars decided to open a floral business. Everything went well for a time, but as things progressed, the other florists in the town got tired of the men of God stealing business from them. So, one day, the local Rotary club hired the local blacksmith, Hugh, to run the friars out of town. Which he did. With extreme prejudice.
The moral of the story, of course is Hugh, and only Hugh can prevent florist friars"
Of course, my clan are notorious sterno drinkers, so that might have something to do with it. I hope you find this little anecdote to be enlightening.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The poem may be Saxe's but story itself is much older than that. It originates from Indian philosophy and illustrates the doctrine of Anekanta or many sidedness of reality. The doctrine itself is essential to Jainism but many scholars are unsure whether it has Jain or Buddhist roots. For a copy of the original story (much older than the 19th century) go here
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
VeryGeekyBooks has more reviews of this book.
Maybe it's just me, but so far this book's premise makes almost no sense:
I can get the part of comparing employees to blind men, and I can follow that we're trying to understand something [the project] that we can't see, but the project is an elephant?? And what's more, it's not important that it's an elephant, but that we improperly deduce what it is in exactly the same way as six Indian blind men... (a fan, a spear, a snake, a wall, etc)
What really worries me now that I've heard the concept though, is what if my project isn't an invisible elephant? What if my project is an invisible gopher, or a snake or a beaver?
Dear God, what if my project isn't an invisible animal at all? What if it's an invisible turkey baster... or an invisible lime green Edsel, or a very visible maytag washer unit... or Bob in accounting?
I may be on to something.
I gotta call my boss... and then... I gotta write a book. Maybe someone on Slashdot will review it...
--
Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
schmaltz ( also schmalz ) (shmalts)
n.
1) Informal.
Excessively sentimental art or music.
2) Maudlin sentimentality.
3)Liquid fat, especially chicken fat.
The heat from below can burn your eyes out
...and the blind man before I'd manage a project that was bigger than myself.
good to know somebody appreciates punny stories...apparently the moderators dont
I prefer the metaphor of a sculptor.
``How do you make an elephant from a big rock?''
``You just chisel away everything of the rock that doesn't look like an elephant.''
I usually start with a rock of old COBOL or sphagetti FORTRAN 66, and just chisel away everything that doesn't look like C code or Java or whatever.
We don't always get all (or any) of teh desired features, but we *do* end up with *very* small programs.
My solo projects are sculpture, it's carved from a clean vision. Nothing quite like being knee deep in bit dust.
;)
Doing mantainance on others code is like spelunking. You drop-in, only seeing what your looking at for a while. Eventually you build a mental map and get to know your way around. Sometimes you only get to see part of the cave... I never try too hard to "imagine" the rest of the cave! Perhaps someone will tell you a bit about it or give you the general layout... Of course having a bright headlamp helps. Fusion powered works good for me!. Gawking just ain't what it used to be
Posting the poem is a violation of the 2004 DMCA-3 Act, extending copyright to life + 300 years for individuals, and infinity - 100 years for corporations, and automatically assigning previously copyright-expired works to Disney. Please send your $25,000,000,000 fine and settlement to the Walt Disney Company, C/O Michael Eisner.
Sometime though, a programmer will grope the wrong part of the elephant. It'll get startled, kick two of the programmers, and charge through the wall, destroying the building. Then zoologists in the realworld will hear that a pre-release elephant is on the loose and try and get pictures of it. Then the zoo postpones releasing Grey Elephant 1.0 since everyone has seen it, and says it will come a few months later after they've made the elephant pink and can fly.
Indeed, you are correct, the story is that each of the 6 men come to a different conclusion.
The analogy works because the problem is the product is the elephant. Each developer cannot see the entire problem, product, or elephant, and must focus on their aspect of the problem, product, and elephant.
The idea is that with some sort of strategy and baseplan, a room full of developers can come out of the project with a single conclusion: An elephant, a product, and solution.
GPL Deconstructed
Ausgezeichneter Kamerad! Jetzt gekommen lassen Sie uns haben irgendeinen Sieggin und -lachen an den unglaubigen Amerikanern! Die Amerikaner entscheiden, in unsere kommunistischen Weisen umzuwandeln bald genug
Look, I'm sorry, but if it's OK with you, I've had enough groping team mates, not to mention one manager.
That was actually pretty funny.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Maybe not. There are probably hotshot programmers out there who might decide to put wheels on the elephant instead of legs, just to soup things up a bit.
After all, if you can assemble an elephant Lego(TM) style, you shouldn't be limited to just legs, right?
Your elephant is white...and obese.
But other than that, the concept of a bunch of people trying to 'reveal the elephant' through individual efforts is probably why so many projects fail or produce sub-optimal results.
Projects vary in many ways. The most significant is often Uncertainty. Towards one end of the continuum we have the Recipe Book project:- "We've done something very similar before - we have the recipe and we know how to follow it". Towards the other end, we have the Wilderness Exploration project:- "We have an idea of where we want to end up, but we really don't know how we will get there, how long the journey will take, nor what adventures may arise on the way."
There are a host of skills and techniques that can help in such situations. One of the most applicable general methodologies that I've learned is the Canadain Method. It was first introduced (so far as I know) to capture Vimy Ridge in World War One. The capture took one day and cost the Canadians 3,500 fatalities and 7,000 wounded. British and French efforts had previously cost over 200,000 lives and produced no significant results during two years.
Twenty plus years of leading projects has given me considerable insight into "The Art and Science of Making the Future Happen."
If you want to read the first chapter of the distillation of this experience, you can find it at: http://www.ProjectsDoneRight.com/pdr/pdrBook.asp
I'd like to slip on a latex glove and fist the elephants asshole. That sounds like a great software process to me!!!
what a picture of an invisible elephant looks like.
Thanks google image search!
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
There is no elephant...EOM
(And this is quite important, so please don't flame me for being politically incorrect or whatever)...
Men tend to solve problems in this way, defining approximate solutions, slicing the problem into pieces and delegating the smaller tasks, focussing relentlessly on technical details, until the elephant has been hunted, killed, skinned, chopped, carried back, eaten, and the fat melted down into candle wax.
Women tend to solve problems by exchanging points of view and information, and arriving at approximate solutions by averaging the solutions they have learned about.
The difference is crystal clear: technical problems cannot be solved by "averages", social problems cannot be solved by "analysis" (unless you're a genius for understanding people).
Of course there are many man who think like women, and vice versa. Gender roles are not iron-clad, they are poles to which people stick more or less.
Both types of problem-solving skill are necessary in solving real-world problems, which are as often social as physical. I.e. if it's a real elephant you're hunting, it's a man's job. If you're constructing a new house, you really need to have a lot of discussion first.
Well-organized teams therefore mix women and men not because they are equal and equivalent (we are not), but because we're complementary.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Saying this book is only about a "cute 'invisible elephant'" analogy is like saying that The Mythical Man Month takes 300 pages to only say that there is no silver bullet for the problems of the dev cycle. My hope would be that newer books derive common ideas from the foundations of modern software engineering, like Brooks' works. Keep an open mind.
I've been standing behind the elephant!
For anyone who's read it, is this book similar to Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister's Peopleware? I really appreciated their keen understanding of the development process in that book and I'm always looking for additional books along those lines. (See also these quotes from some of the authors and this Joel on Software review to get a feel for the book.)
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
One day six wise, blind elephants were discussing what humans were like. Failing to agree, they decided to determine what humans were like by direct experience.
The first wise, blind elephant felt the human, and declared, "Humans are flat."
The other wise, blind elephants, after similarly feeling the human, agreed.
Technoli
i heard a similar (or as they say in Indiana, simular) one that had the islanders coveting thrones (terlets) and storing them in the rafters of their huts. when a storm came thru and the thrones fell on the inhabitants, they came up with "People in grass houses should not stow thrones."
...as usual, courtesy of Slashdot's resident Amazon-whore.
I've got an account exec that needs this book.
Only she's taken the story and placed the six blind men in six different rooms, they don't know about each other, and only gives the information she feels each blind man needs to know.
Now build that elephant!
Micro managing noncommunicative hag that she is!
Sometimes she'll pass out the same project to two people just to see which one finishes it first. Nothing like duplication of work!
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
It's too Schmaltzy...
As you said, lots of Men think the way women do - so why categorize the styles of thinking in terms of sexes and not in terms of the thought patterns?
It does no good to mix women and men on a project if all you get are people that think the same. The best idea is to mix a number of different styles on a projectt, even if that means all men or all women.
Personally I find the Meyers-Briggs definition for personality types to be pretty accurate - many companies have employees take this test to "learn how to wrk with others". The sad part of this is that they take this potentially very valuable data and then do nothing at all with it, which is why these sessions are usually a dramatic waste of time beyond an afternoon of amusement! If they would use some of theses results for mix a team toegther with complementary personailities (or actually figuring out how to approach team communication given the mixes involved which is suppose dto be original intent) they might start seeing some useful results.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Once upon a time, there were five blind men who had the opportunity to experience an elephant for the first time. One approached the elephant, and, upon encountering one of its sturdy legs, stated, "Ah, an elephant is like a tree." The second, after exploring the trunk, said, "No, an elephant is like a strong hose." The third, grasping the tail, said "Fool! An elephant is like a rope!" The fourth, holding an ear, stated, "No, more like a fan." And the fifth, leaning against the animal's side, said, "An elephant is like a wall." The five then began to argue loudly about who had the more accurate perception of the elephant.
The elephant, tiring of all this abuse, suddenly reared up and attacked the men. He continued to trample them until they were nothing but bloody lumps of flesh. Then, strolling away, the elephant remarked, "It just goes to show that you can't depend on first impressions. When I first saw them I didn't think they they'd be any fun at all."
I don't think I want anything to do with this.
Here's A.J. Arberry's translation (Though the standard translation, at least the one that most Persianists use is R.A. Nicholson's translation but while I have a hard copy I can't find the text on the net for convenient copying and pasting. Nicholson was Arberry's teacher. Incidentally, you'll search in vain to find a better translation of the Qur'an than Arberry's "The Koran Interpreted" despite it's use of archaisms-not too heavy though) with a few of my changes.
The Elephant in the dark, on the reconciliation of opposites
SOME Hindus had brought an elephant for exhibition and placed it in a dark house. Crowds of people were going into that dark place to see the beat. Finding that visual inspection was impossible, each visitor felt it with his palm in the darkness.
The palm of one fell on the trunk.
'This creature is like a water-spout,' he said.
The hand of another lighted on the elephant's ear. To him the beat was evidently like a fan.
Another rubbed against its leg.
'I found the elephant's shape is like a pillar,' he said.
Another laid his hand on its back.
'Certainly this elephant was like a throne,' he said.
The sensual eye* is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the best.
The eye of the Sea is one thing and the foam another. Let the foam go, and gaze with the eye of the Sea. Day and night foam-flecks are flung from the sea: of amazing! You behold the foam but not the Sea. We are like boats dashing together; our eyes are darkened, yet we are in clear water.
* sensual meaning the eye of sense perception, sensual is Arberry's translation.
The intellectually-blind wage-slave sweatshop "software engineers" from Indostan, coupled with the pointy-haired amorphous-blob your coworkers call "the boss," "da man" or "the elephant?"
So India is now outsourcing their analogies to us? I, for one, welcome our analogy-outsourcing wage-undercutting overlords!
No prizes for guessing where Indostan is. Hope this book gives freash lease to quality team work, which is still in infancy in the Indian s/w arena.
when I get groped and am mistaken for an elephant.
"It is actually kind of fun, in a peculiar way..."
Hacking humans is fun.
1. All I can think of when I hear the title of this book is the old S. Gross NatLamp cartoon, where the sixth blind guy has his hands buried in elephant shit. 2. Okay, I lied. The other thing I think of is two years ago, when every high tech company that wanted to fire people and let them down easy was handing them "Who Moved My Cheese?" first? So, who moved my elephant shit?
So, we have
I wonder how much the publisher (or the author?) of this book paid wordsupply.com for this review.
The guy who wrote the review, David McClintock, happens to be with Dorset House publishing -- who publishes DeMarco and Lister's books. Schmaltz also happens to be a member in good standing of the community of folks that have worked closely with one of the grand old men of Software Development, Jerry Weinberg. This community, of course, includes DeMarco and Lister. So, yes, I'd say this book has similarities to Peopleware. You might disagree.
Fascinating how the comments here reflect so accurately the final verse of the John Godfrey Saxe poem that Schmaltz uses to begin his book.
Moral:
So oft in theologic wars,
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an Elephant
Not one of them has seen!
Saxe's poem was yet another version of the many different versions of the ancient Eastern fable. As with such fables, they hold true in many situations -- project work, and various posters to reviews of books, apparently. I wonder what reports these selfsame blind men (and women) might have if they spent a couple of hours actually reading and considering this short book.