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?
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.
Here's another review on this book.
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
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]
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.
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.
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
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"
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.
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.
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?
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
(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
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.