Bozo Bit - Dismissing A Person As Not Worth Listening To

Dismissing A Person As Not Worth Listening To

In his 1995 book Dynamics of Software Development (ISBN 1-55615-823-8), which presented a series of rules about the political and interpersonal forces that drive software development, Jim McCarthy applied the bozo bit notion to the realm of human interaction. The technical issues facing programmers were sufficiently daunting that just getting code written was commonly considered good enough; McCarthy and other authors (Lister & DeMarco, Constantine, McConnell) were just breaking the news that social issues trump technical ones on almost every project.

McCarthy's Rule #4 is "Don't Flip The Bozo Bit". McCarthy's advice was that everyone has something to contribute — it's easy and tempting, when someone ticks you off or is mistaken (or both), to simply disregard all their input in the future by setting the "bozo flag" to TRUE for that person. But by taking that lazy way out, you poison team interactions and cannot avail yourself of help from the "bozo" ever again.

Read more about this topic:  Bozo Bit

Famous quotes containing the words listening to, person, worth and/or listening:

    Listening to someone talk isn’t at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.
    Oriana Fallaci (b. 1930)

    It is not merely the likeness which is precious ... but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing ... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say ... that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest Artist’s work ever produced.
    Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

    The New Hampshire girls who came to Lowell were descendants of the sturdy backwoodsmen who settled that State scarcely a hundred years before.... They were earnest and capable; ready to undertake anything that was worth doing. My dreamy, indolent nature was shamed into activity among them. They gave me a larger, firmer ideal of womanhood.
    Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)

    The parent is the strongest statement that the child hears regarding what it means to be alive and real. More than what we say or do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual.
    Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)