Erik Meade's Blog

Speed play - slowing down to go faster

In my last entry, Fartlek - Increasing your Sustainable Pace, I introduced fartleking as a metaphor to increase sustainable pace. I then went on to talk about some of the horrid things we let business do to us in the name of going faster and ended with a personal, touching story to illustrate the importance of Sustainable Pace.

John D. Mitchell took issue with my metaphor, in Rhythms in Software Development saying that rhythm was more appropriate.

Eugene Wallingfor's Speed Training for Software Developers squarely hit the mark I was aiming for with:

The bigger question in my mind involves mature development teams. Will occasional speed workouts, whether on from deadline pressure on live jobs or on contrived exercises in the studio, help a team perform faster the next time they face time pressure?

Which takes me back to the second thing that business forgets about when it increases the pace. But to start at the beginning, I have always understood fartlek to be an advanced exercise, which means you already have your long distance sustainable pace. You know what it is and you know if you are at it or not. I'm not sure you can have a sustainable pace without rhythm, maybe XP's time boxing just makes me feel it that way.

Like much of XP, for speed play to be effective it has to be voluntary. Can you imagine a forced fartlek? Forced fartlek, now that smells like a business process.

So you pick your target and fartlek.

Then, you recover, back to that good ol' I can go like this forever sustainable pace.

One more time... you must start from a sustainable pace, if your not having fun, if the thought of speed-play is frightening or stresses you out, don't do it, your not ready yet, your first step is to find your sustainable pace.

Comments

• Alas, I despair that you still miss such a crucial, fundamental point. Sustainable Pace is predicated on (i.e., built on top of) rhythm. I.e., it's a myth that there is some sort of constant, unchanging pace which is sustainable indefinitely. That's patently false at the physical level as well as everywhere else. The whole point is that e.g., developers and their managers must wake up to the reality that software development must become a humane process and the only way for that to happen is to take into account the larger contexts in which software development takes part. Rhythm and balance are two fundamental facets to that.

  Posted by: johnm on December 09, 2004 at 10:24 AM

• 
  I despair too John, because while I do see rhythm and balance in sustainable pace, I also see them in unsustainable paces. I would say that the rhythms are wrong, and the balance isn't balanced enough, which is probably better than no rhythm and no balance, but still not good enough to be sustainable, without further refinement and balancing.

  I wish we could agree that at a single moment in time, when a developer's rhythm and balance are "right enough", that she can see herself happily, eagerly doing what she is doing for the foreseeable future (as she sees it at that point in time), that she is at a sustainable pace.

  Posted by: emeade on December 09, 2004 at 12:43 PM

• Ah, you're talking about the utility of deluding ourselves. :-) Given your argument, "Sustainable Pace" is about manifesting a relatively consistent pace for a certain portion of a cycle within your larger rhythm. That's fine but denying the underlying rhythms induces and/or exacerbates the myriad dysfunctions related to "pacing".

  In terms of your first paragraph, a person/group may well choose a pace which puts them into serious debt. That's most certainly not in balance. The next thing that seems to be missing is the fact that it's the peoples'/organizations' choice. I.e., each of us as individuals, each of us as members of a group, the group as a whole, etc. are responsible for our choice of how we balance ourselves. There is no a priori "right" pace, balance, or rhythm.

  One last bit of analogy... Naive pace is like pushing the throttle in a car to a certain point and leaving it there. I.e., it's static (and therefore brittle). Rhythm-based pacing is dynamic and therefore can accomodate the changes in reality over time (like a runner who changes there speed, gait, lean, foot strike pattern, etc. as the conditions change be they external or internal).
  

  Posted by: johnm on December 09, 2004 at 09:14 PM

• Yes, John, please allow those of us who, if only for a moment, think we have found the right balance and rhythm, to continue deluding ourselves, at least for long enough to figure out how to be just a bit better, so we can then realize that we really didn't have it right before.

  Posted by: emeade on December 09, 2004 at 10:27 PM

• Sigh.
  

  Posted by: johnm on December 10, 2004 at 09:10 AM

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