Software Design Kuleana

Last year I tore apart my kitchen with a sledge hammer and a crowbar. I knocked a wall down, ripped out the old, crumbly cabinets, and tore up the 20-year old vinyl flooring that was discolored and horrifically 80’s. I specifically remember using my crowbar to pull off one section of cabinets, sawing it completely in half with my Sawzall, and then flinging it off my lanai, crashing into the ground below, exploding into broken pieces of Bad 70’s Kitchen Cabinetry.

Out of this came an awesome kitchen remodel that we worked really hard for:

From House Pics

Awesome Except for One, Massive Thing
See those counter tops? They’re concrete. A choice my wife and I made because we love the look and also because we wanted to be as “green” as possible. Our contractor was highly recommended (friend of a friend) and his price was right – not the cheapest but within our budget. He came in and spent about 2 hours with us one day, meticulously laying out measurements and “layouts” that would help him create the cast. This is when I started to get uneasy.

“I thought you were going to build the forms right here and and poor everything in place so we won’t have seams and everything remains level” I asked.

“Sure, I could do that but if I use forms then I can cast everything upside down in my workshop with this special material that will leave a nice, shiny surface that won’t need to be polished endlessly. Saves on hours and also keeps the mess down – otherwise I’d probably make a mess of your kitchen. Also, if any part of it breaks in the future, you can just replace a section and not the whole counter”.

Saving money and mess – sounded like a good argument. Also it seemed like a good “maintainability” plan which appealed to my geek side.

On the day he delivered the counter we found out he had to create more sections than he anticipated, due to weight and fragility. The section next to the sink was liable to break during installation, so he played it safe and made one section into two. This made me uneasy again – the seam was right down the middle of the sink and seams and sinks don’t make good friends (food, water, etc). But I trusted him, so on we went.

Once all the sections were fitted in, the contractor sat there and stared at it and said the words all homeowners dread: “hmm, that’s a little bigger than I thought it would be”. And thus started our adventures in counter-top pain. Over the course of the next 6 months everything with the counter went to hell:

• He used the wrong edging on the forms so that the seam edges were rounded (normally you only want the outer edges of the counter to be rounded so they’re not sharp). This caused the seems to have a 1/2 inch gap – not good.
• He filled the gap using concrete putty, with his fingers. It looks like my 6-yr old did it.
• He punched a hole through the section next to the sink when he was drilling the supports (from underneath) for our dishwasher. He tried to patch it but it didn’t work since it looked like… a patched hole in the nice concrete counter. He hired a “touch-up” artist to paint over it and it looked OK for 4 months until the paint started to peel off. It wasn’t supposed to peel, but it did because …
• He forgot to seal the countertops. The first time I cooked on the stove I stained the counter around it with a nice dark halo, caused by the exceedingly greasy stir fry I made.
• When he ultimately sealed the counter tops, he used the wrong sealer. It wore off in 4 months (it was water-based and they don’t work so well when you wipe counters off with water-based water on a towel) and pretty soon we had glass rings, metal leachate rings (white rings from metal contact), and juice stains.

Long story short – he eventually stopped returning our calls and we didn’t pay him. Everything came to a head last week when he asked to get paid (believe it or not) and I basically told him:

I’m not paying you for effort, I’m paying you for countertops. I don’t have those – so you don’t get paid.

He then said “oh well, I guess we’ll call it a writeoff and a hard lesson learned.”. Which means I ultimately lose in this deal as I now have to clean up his mess (and pay someone to do it). I might just whip out my sledge hammer and crowbar again…

Why I’m Telling You This Story
How many times have you gotten into a scrape with a client or boss? Have you ever grumbled when they’re seemingly unreasonable and tell you what technology to use? I have, and it’s no fun.

In this case my contractor was focused on how best to get things done with minimal “friction” and maximum maintainability. Believe it or not – sometimes that kind of thing may actually hinder the delivery of what your client wants. For instance:

• How many times have you shaved the scope because of a particular architectural design choice?
• How many times have you had to rip out a technology set at midnight and then code all night long to get your client’s site back online?
• How many times have you talked a client out of a feature because it wouldn’t fit with your design choice?

If you’ve said “never” to all three of these – I applaud you (I can’t do that). Or maybe you should go look in the mirror and see how long your nose is . My point is that the client ultimately trusts you, but that trust has NOTHING to do with technology and everything to do with delivering what they expect to see. Mastering this understanding is at the core of what we do, and almost always at the core of every client disagreement.

If you’re about to tell me “yes but clients always change their mind” – I’ll agree with you. I’ll also say that since you know this, you should be ready for it. In my case I didn’t change my mind on my counters – it was changed for me (which happens a lot too). The contractor did his best but I didn’t get what I wanted – nice countertops. He didn’t get paid – the equation is simple.

Now I could have sat there and told him “no – I don’t want sections, I want you to cast it in place. I also want you to make sure to use small screws when putting in the dishwasher, and also make sure you use a top of the line concrete sealer” – but should I have needed to do this? Moreover – I didn’t even know these were issues until they became issues.

This mess could have been avoided if…

1. We had a better dialog. I should have made it clearer what I was willing to compromise on, and what I wasn’t. Likewise he should have explained a bit more (visually) on what I was going to get out of the deal.
2. He had a better work ethic or “Kuleana” – a personal responsibility. He should have replaced everything the minute he realized how bad it was. I let him know, believe me, and he chose to walk the other direction. I could have (probably should have) chased him down to make things right, but it’s a small island over here and I figured he’d be back for his money (and he was).

What’s Your Kuleana?
All the things we argue about on Twitter and in blog posts, your “Kuleana” is primarily to your client, not yourself or the industry at large. Hopefully the two go hand in hand, but if you find yourself saying “my client doesn’t get it” or “man I wish they let me do X,Y,or Z” then you need to reflect on what it is YOU are doing to foster this situation.

One of the neat things DDD has is the Ubiquitous Language – the structured dialog that builds client understanding. I think this is just a fancy word for “being a good consultant” – something that you are or are not. You’ve heard it before, but it’s very, very true:

Being a good [relevant partner in a relationship] requires you to listen

Marriage, friendship, consulting, blogging, Twitter, bowling league on Wednesdays. You have to have listening skillz or you’re not a good [relevant partner in a relationship]. So many client failures can be avoided by realizing the burden of listening is on US, not them. We’re here to solve their issues – it’s our Kuleana.