Day One

Jaime and I were shopping and decided to go to the book store. I wanted to pick up a good use case book to use as a reference at the office, especially for Samantha. I tend to get ideas and tools like this stuck in my head quickly and forget that this knowledge is not immediately shared with everyone else, or is necessarily gospel. But I have seen the "beauty" of use cases and have argued there use in our estimating process. That is how my mind interprets project size.

So while crouched down just to the left of my usually fare (Java, C#, and Ajax books that were either soviet-like red and black with foreboding images of geekdom's leaders or colorful etchings of strange animals), I found a book entitled "Agile Estimating and Planning" with a more modest, business-like cover. This caught my eye because that is precisely what we have been trying to figure out at work, or at least some process for the chaos. I figured this is what we do for a living, we should become experts on it, research it, make decisions based on empirical decisions. It's gotta be worth the - flip - stare - gulp - price. Paper is very expensive these days I thought.

So I sat on the floor next to my wife as she was looking at anatomy books. I briefly embarrassed myself to eager book buyers in most other sections by commenting that one author's name in my aisle - "Dr. John Null" - was "how unfortunate!". The other people in the store that looked away from their quests gazed towards me as the volume of the rest of the world was muted and my dorky comment was evidently heard throughout the entire store. I dropped to the floor, and of course laughed and blushed at the cinematic quality of the moment.


As I read I agreed with everything written, begin to find research that backed some of my hunches, and in general just got excited with the simplicity of the process. I realized something then... Paper is cheap - ideas are priceless.

This guy... "Mike Cohn", does not have an unfortunate name. In fact, he has found a way to express what I have had such a hard time communicating at work, and has give credibility to it! Anyone who read the book would understand my mind and my thinking, and add to that details on how it can be seen through completion - well beyond where I would take it.

And so, we left with nearly $100 worth of books. As I left I recalled book purchases that I have made last time. White paper bound in colorful sleeves with faces and diagrams and CDs mounted in the back. They remain, a few chapters read and shelved for reference. But this time I realized something important. That books could give me a way to share and express my
knowledge to others through those skilled at the art of communication. I felt like a professor. I realized my greatest contribution to work may be teaching.