I know you need more info…

September 9, 2014November 19, 2014 jo2sn Autism, Family and fun autism, change, decisions, geeks, information, leadership, management, media, mission, people, risks, unknown_unknown

Left to my own devices I probably would

May 7, 2014May 7, 2014 jo2sn Autism, Softwaretesting #TestingPlanet, conference, cost, decisions, gofigure, special_needs, testbash

“You can easily do a half-marathon”

Yes I could, but the thing is it would need longer runs. I run with the Running Club Tuesdays and Thursdays before dinner. As a simplified example – if dinner get’s delayed the kids won’t eat as well, then they can’t fall asleep – and will need to eat past their bed time. They will sleep too late, and we (the parents) will have less time to the evening chores and being together. Every time there is something I’d like to do, there is always something else that matters that doesn’t get done.

“Come to X-conference – it’s just a matter of priority if you’re one of the ones”

Sure, it is – that’s easy for you to say. But €2000 + travel is out of my private pocket, missing work hours is out of my pocket, being away from family is out of both my time and their time. And really €4000 is a lot of money in a family with two kids with special needs – where the income is one job, one early retired. Also it’s a stupid argument, as I can point to heroes of testing that I consider “one of the ones” that like me aren’t going to both this and that.

I can do a Test Bash, write blog posts* and articles for the Testing Planet etc.

I can run 14km in 1½ hours.

(*: and I’ll try to get back to blogging more)

Quote Left to my own devices

and I could
and left to my own devices
I probably would
Left to my own devices
I probably would
Oh, I would

Quality comes in all shapes and sizes

January 2, 2014September 10, 2021 jo2sn Autism, Family and fun, Softwaretesting context, decisions

Quality comes in all shapes and sizes .. like Christmas trees. This Christmas I was out selling trees at the local “shopping center ” with my oldest.Most left with a tree that satisfied the acceptance criteria – explicit as well as implicit – yet still no one came with a requirement spec…

Heuristics from the merry christmas tree salesmen:

The tree looked at first – is usually returned to and bought
Do A/B split testing between one or two trees
Too many options makes selecting even more confusing
One family’s reject – is another family’s perfect fit
Context is important – like how much room inside, how many people, how many kids
The closer to deadline – the less options
No one notices the wicked branches, when the music plays and the tree is lit
After christmas it doesn’t matter how picky you were with the details

A young person came to us looking a bit puzzled – they had never bought a tree herself, and the tree been bought was not for them. All they knew was that they had volunteered to do charity help to a down-and-out family. They wanted to purchase a tree for christmas – but could not their own home. I can only guess that this specific christmas tree was the family’s perfect tree. The cost didn’t matter to the young person at all – but the implicit value even more.

Many decisions are never about the monetary (sunk) costs. Hence your customer makes seemingly odd decisions – and that’s OK.

Stakeholders

November 6, 2013April 25, 2022 jo2sn Autism, Family and fun, LEGO acceptance criteria, change, motivation, predictability, special_needs

Motivated by LEGO, Pasta with ketchup, DR Ramasjang Rally – as other boys

Yet with autism (both, as in official ICD-10 and DSM-IV). They could have been placed on a side track. They could be educated and trained to know that structure and predictability is the known world. But they are too curious, communicative and smart…. #methinks 🙂

We train them to be able to deal with change, unpredictability and the benefits of both direct and intrinsic motivation. Because they benefit from it and it helps them being accepted and included.

Have you noticed that uncertainty is the new normal? Adapting to this take courage, integrity and persistence. #NLDRcoach

— Ron McIntyre (@ronmci) November 1, 2013

Pragmatic choices of what is important and possible

September 3, 2013April 5, 2017 jo2sn Autism, Family and fun autism, waad

[ Master thesis about fathers to a child with autism ]

To have a child with autism is a continuing and constantly changing process of experience. The fathers collect experiences along the way with this different family-life, which did not turn out as they expected it to. They live a pressured and unpredictable daily life, of which they use metaphors such as “war zone” and “marathon”. They often have to take one day at a time, and in periods of their life one can argue, that it is more survival than actually collecting experience.
It is very important for the fathers to be a good father. They all place a high value on children and family. Although they fulfill the role as a father in the Danish societal sense, it shows that the choices they make through the process, and what they value in proportion to being a good father, is very different. The analysis shows, that their road is shaped by pragmatic choices of what is important and possible.

The yardstick of mythical normality

June 25, 2013June 25, 2013 jo2sn Autism acceptance, acceptance criteria, asperger, autism, brain, competence, skills

Those that accepted me, worked with my neurology not against it. Their yardstick was not a mythical normality but the potential that they felt that I could achieve. They recognized that my way of doing and learning certain things was different. Instead of proceeding from the assumption that was somehow wrong, they worked with it and helped me to find the place where my neurology and the world could safely mix.

[ What Acceptance Means to Me | Published on April 20, 2013 by Lynne Soraya in Asperger’s Diary on http://www.psychologytoday.com ]

People are people – despite their labels

April 2, 2013April 4, 2023 jo2sn Autism asperger, brain, conference, special_needs, STEM, waad

I generally despise the “despite” in the following sentences

Despite being black … they became a president
Despite being a Dane … they described atomic theory
Despite being a child carer .. they where astronomer
Despite being asperger … they was a genius scientist
Despite having ADHD … they became a an educational inspiration for kids (dk)
Despite being autistic … they were an expert in finding patterns (dk)
Despite being autistic … they can play together (dk)
Despite being autistic … they had complex emotions (dk)

I’d rather we use a child with autism, a child with ADHD, a person with asperger… A mother, a woman, a Dane, a black person – a person. Children with a diagnosis is so much more than the diagnosis – they are children. People are so much more that their labels, they are people first – labels second.

it’s your greatest skill that matter

January 3, 2013September 10, 2021 jo2sn Autism, Enterprise IT, Softwaretesting change, economy, jobs, skills, STEM

it is increasingly a worker’s greatest skill, not their average skill level, that matters. As capitalism has grown more adept at disaggregating tasks, workers can focus on what they do best, and managers are challenged to make room for brilliant, if difficult, outliers.

This march toward greater specialization, combined with the pressing need for expertise in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, so-called STEM workers, suggests that the prospects for (knowledge *) workers will be on the rise in the coming decades. If the market can forgive people’s weaknesses, then they will rise to the level of their natural gifts.

…

The above is from The Autism Advantage – I have replaced the word “autistic” at the * with KNOWLEDGE and it’s probably true for most knowledge jobs – including software testing 🙂

[ Hire Autistic People; Here’s Why | inc.com | January 3, 2013]

“It will be an economic failure if the new wave of high school graduates can’t be employed. All these kids have talent and ability and a tremendous capacity to contribute. We have to stop thinking that all employees have to be the same, with the same skills, the same attributes.”

…

For example, anything very repetitious and detail-oriented, work that requires great visual memory for the spotting of anomalies. You might not often think of someone with autism in terms of communication but they can be fantastic at understanding rules-bound communication, where it matters exactly what can and can’t be said to whom.

[ The Autism Advantage | New York Times | November 29 2012]

This emerging understanding of autism may change attitudes toward autistic workers. But intelligence, even superior intelligence, isn’t enough to get or keep a job. Modern office culture — with its unwritten rules of behavior, its fluid and socially demanding work spaces — can be hostile territory for autistic people, who do better in predictable environments and who tend to be clumsy at shaping their priorities around other people’s requirements.

Testing is your sensory nerves

December 13, 2012December 19, 2013 jo2sn Autism, Softwaretesting brain, decisions, management, wicked problem

Remember how the brain reorganized it’s neurons when information stopped coming in? Just because the ‘wiring’ is fixed and the information flow is restarted doesn’t mean that the brain will start listening! Second, the brains’ map of sensory information coming from the hand has been distorted, and the brain will have to relearn the hand-map again.

It’s very much like a management board having to learn how to include information they haven’t had for a while, in their decision making.

Testing is your sensory nerves