Do you know about smokejumpers? They’re brave, self-sufficient firefighters who parachute into remote areas wearing eighty pounds of gear and ready to fight a forest fire. If the jump goes well, they land safely. After extinguishing the fire, they may have a ten-mile hike out. It’s not a job for the faint of heart, slow of mind, or weak of back.

Have you considered that you may be a smokejumper?

A quick update on systems thinking items:

Problems or Opportunities? Where should you focus your effort?

Will reorganizing every two weeks lead to stable software processes? What conditions would enable this to happen? When should we schedule the next change?

… learning to solve other people’s problems means learning to connect with your client, understand what they think they have, what they think they want, and what they would like to do about it. The experience of living teaches each of us a lot about this kind of problem solving, but the lessons are often murky.