How to discover problems, understand them and solve them. This presentation is meant for developers who want to become problem solvers and architects.

1. MAC Convergence Lecture
Life skills – become the world's finest developers
Rinka Singh

2. Agenda
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Life skills of a brilliant developer, problem solver
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Problem identification and validation
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Problem solving
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Intrapreneurship & Entrepreneurship
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Your takeaways
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Reading, references

3. Who is this person?
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Multics (MULTiplexed Information and Computing Service) – MIT, GE,
Bell Labs & ARPA
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Next-gen time-sharing OS
Over weight & inconsistent requirements
Bell labs pulled out – budget cut.
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Called it unix (pun on the word Multics)
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Ritchie & Thompson wrote a simple OS in spare time – because it was fun
and they wanted to do it.
Used an old PDP-7
First apps
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C language – to improve portability & port to a PDP-11
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Text processing – for the Bell Labs secretaries to type documents
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Games: “Space Travel“ on the PDP-7

4. ...and this one?
From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Hello everybody out there using minix I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486)
AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the filesystem (due to practical reasons) among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get
something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want.
Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task
switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I
have :-(.

5. ... him?
James Gosling
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As part of a project - was looking for a language
to run on many platforms
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looked at many languages
Couldn't identify one that fitted.
Went ahead and wrote a new language
Which language?

6. ...and them?
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PhD students at Stanford
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Research project: “Backrub“ – 1998
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Goal: “to develop the enabling technologies for
a single, integrated and universal digital library“
Started at the Stanford website with the
domain http://google.stanford.edu/

7. What about him?
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Student at Harvard.
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Wrote “Facemash“ in his second year.
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2004 did Facebook for Harvard students
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Then schools & universities
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And then opened it out to the world

8. And a final one...
Andy Rubin
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Co-founder of Android Inc.
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An open source company.
Funded by Google
Also co-founded Danger Inc.
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Bought out by Microsoft
4 patents
Currently SVP at Google – manages
Google Chrome.
Net Worth – about $100 M

9. What is common
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Problem solving: Discover a problem; Understand & live with it
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A language that will run on everything
Connecting people (facemash)
Building a global library (backrub)
try & discard – iterate (facemash, backrub)
They are playing, having fun, learning
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Multics to unix
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No games? we'll write them
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Kept trying, kept learning, kept improving – continuous learning
Sorting 1PB at google (2008)
Effortless – masters of their game
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How do you become a master?
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The road to mastery – 10,000 hours (12 years)
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You gotta love working at it or you won't make a master

10. Problem Identification and analysis
What is a problem
What is a symptom
Patterns and pattern recognition

11. The car that had an ice­cream allergy
General Motors got a customer complaint – his new GM Pontiac was
allergic to ice-cream.
“...I won't blame you for not answering me, because I know it kind of
sounds crazy but I have a car that is allergic to ice-cream.
I recently purchased a new Pontiac and since then my trips to the
store have created a problem. Every time I buy vanilla ice cream,
when I start back from the store, my car won't start“.
So GM sent an engineer to check it out…

12. … ice­cream allergy
How did the engineer analyze the root cause of a seemingly impossible bug?
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Did not dismiss the issue as being impossible or the customer as being a jerk.
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Collected data without jumping to conclusions or offering a quick fix work around.
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Figured out what parameters to look for.
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Saw a pattern in the data.
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Finally he defined the problem – restart interval. The rest was trivial...
Define the problem, ask the right questions

13. An expert is not someone that gives the right answer
it is someone that asks the right questions...

14. Jeff Bezos – Problem solving
Bezos and his leadership team have a tradition of visiting the
Amazon.com Fulfillment Centers in Q4; spend time with the
associates, and physically work alongside everyone.
During one such visit, there had been a safety incident where an
associate had severely damaged his finger.
When Jeff heard this, he was very disturbed and emotional —
angry at first, then felt bad for this associate and his family. Then...
He pulled up a board and did a 5W based problem analysis

15. … 5W based Problem Analysis
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Why did the associate damage his thumb?
– Thumb got caught in the conveyor.
Why did his thumb get caught in the conveyor?
– He was chasing his bag, which was on a running conveyor.
Why did he chase his bag?
– He placed his bag on the conveyor, but it then turned-on by surprise
Why was his bag on the conveyor?
– Because he used the conveyor as a table
Root Cause
Root cause of the associate’s damaged thumb is that he needed a table and
used a conveyor as a table. So...
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We provide tables at the appropriate stations
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Also update and a greater focus on safety training.
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Also, look into preventative maintenance standard work.

16. Solving the problem...
NOT YET!!! We are not there yet.
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Test your understanding of the problem first
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Dive deep...
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How will you test?
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Understand what the other person expects as a “good result“
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With whom? How will you understand your customer's needs.
Can you add value?
Prototype
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Quickly...
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Backrub, facemash...
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Anyone heard of QDOS?

17. Problem solving...
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First ensure you are solving the right problem.
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Ask what, why, how, when and where
Prioritize – which problem will you solve first
Learn, read, contribute
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Subscribe to newletters
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Contribute to your industry – how many of you contribute to Open Source?
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Figure out how to apply
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Attend meetups,
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Read, read, read – everything related to your field.
Solve problems – practice, practice, practice for 10,000 hrs...
Collect & share knowledge – become THE go-to expert.

18. Intrapreneurs and Entrepreneurs
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Who is an Intrapreneur
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Don Estridge – the father of the IBM PC
Gary Starkweather – Laser printer at Xerox PARC
Who is an entrepreneur
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Very similar people...
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What skills do they have
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Should you build these skills?

19. Take aways
What did you
learn today?

20. Reading, References
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References
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Unix: An oral history
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Linux - history
History of Java
Readings
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How we master a skill - I mean REALLY MASTER something
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Code complete, Steve McConnell ISBN - 9780735619678
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Stack overflow – Programmers' reading guide