The Anatomy Of A Twonk

The Agile Angel (TAA) loves acronyms. She works in software FFS and if you don’t appreciate a good TLA in that game then you’re pretty well sunk.

So, she’d like to introduce you to a personal favourite. The TWONK.

Typical Worker Of Nominal Kompetence*

(ok, so the spelling is not perfect, but its such a good word she couldn’t resist).

Twonks are the rank-and-file of software development. The mediocre majority of key-pushers who make up the numbers in most organisations. Twonks exist in other industries certainly, but she has observed that software development seems to be rich environment for them to thrive.

Twonks are employees** who are not especially effective, not particularly knowledgeable, don’t really add much value but are blissfully unaware of their own limitations. Their employers also seem to fail to recognise these shortcomings. They’re suffering from the universal obsession that you can improve things by increasing the number of Twonks you employ***. She often wonders why they seem oblivious to the fact that they are actually worsening the Non-Twonk-To-Twonk ratio (the NT3 ratio).****

Understanding Twonks is extremely important to the Agile Angel. For her, effective Twonk management is one of the keys to successful software. In fact she’s quite surprised there isn’t more literature on the subject. She is considering writing a blog on TTT (Total Twonk Management).

Twonks will represent the the bulk of the people working on your software product and yet they will contribute far less proportionally than their non-twonky counterparts. In many cases she is certain that Twonks are outright detrimental and represent a significant and unnecessary overhead. She has fantasised about how productive a team might be if all Twonks were simply eliminated. What she is very certain of and has witnessed on many occasions is that if great care is not taken with how Twonks are deployed and managed then projects (especially Agile ones) will most likely fail. Good Scrum Masters (the rare, non-twonky ones) know this all too well and will usually take very careful measures to ensure they manage their NT3 ratios and to neutralise the damage Twonks might otherwise do.

Not all Twonks are bad however. A very rare breed of Twonk, the Self-Aware Twonk (SAT) can actually be quite useful. Without them and their fundamental grasp of their own limitations the non-twonks would have a lot more of the boring stuff to do. Many SATs make good Scrum Masters BTW.

Anyway, this is not an exhaustive definition but here’s The Agile Angel’s mini-guide to identifying common characteristics of a Twonk.

• Twonks don’t think they are Twonks. They suffer from twonk-blindness. (this is perhaps their biggest weakness)
• Twonks tend to assume almost everyone else is a Twonk.
• Twonks can exist at any level in an organisation but tend to either gravitate quickly up or stay low to the ground. Put it another way, if you’re not a Twonk it means you probably work for one and also have a few who work for you. Note: this can still be true if you are a Twonk.
• Twonks overrate their own skills.
• Twonks undervalue everyone else’s skills.
• Twonks account for the majority of all software professionals.
• Twonks think software is a profession.
• Due to twonk-blindness, Twonks typically fail to identify and often prefer other Twonks. This may account for the high numbers of Twonks who are able to climb the corporate ladder.
• Twonks claim to dislike meetings but always attend them (and are often noisy contributors).
• Twonks often claim to be experts.
• Twonks are rarely held directly accountable but consider themselves decision makers.
• Twonks don’t read much.
• Twonks claim to know a lot, and share it.
• Twonks don’t like having their opinions questioned.
• Twonks question everyone else’s opinions.
• Twonks are keen to teach.
• Twonks dislike learning.
• Twonks find nothing strange in preferring apples to oranges, oranges to pears and pears to apples. This is particularly true of Management Twonks.
• Twonks think its important for you to listen.
• Twonks don’t listen.
• Programmer Twonks think they know a lot about programming.
• Programmer Twonks tend to work with and specialise in one language. The more popular the language the more likely the programmer is a Twonk.
• Programmer Twonks don’t like unit testing, scripting, databases, UIs or anything else that is actually useful.
• Programmer Twonks are a source of defects.
• Programmer Twonks hate bug fixing.
• Twonks like patterns but can’t spot duplication.
• Twonks are obsessed with performance but don’t understand maintainability.
• Many Twonks become Scrum Masters. Usually because someone else has identified them as a Twonk and promoted them away from coding, or design, or whatever (the manager is almost certainly a Twonk, in case that wasn’t obvious).
• All Architects are Twonks. Only a Twonk would want the job.
• All heads of departments are Twonks for the same reason.
• So is everyone in HR and hence why so many Twonks have jobs.
• And so are most CEOs.

(The Angel always likes to hear of new Twonk Criteria)

Now here’s the really bad news. If most of the people you work with are Twonks then, probabilistically speaking, its likely you are too.

Don’t be too downhearted. The Angel knows that many Twonks have elevated themselves from the mire of mediocrity. The first step to a life free of twonkiness is self-awareness. The Self Aware Twonk begins to see herself in a true light. Her new found awareness means she can curb the worst of her counter-productive behaviour and from there, who knows. She can sometimes even turn it around completely.

And the Angels advice to SATs is that the best first step for a newly aware Twonk is... Agile. Go read about Extreme Programming*****. Adopt it and practise it vigorously, and without question. If you can do that the Angel thinks you may well be on the road to recovery.

The Agile Angel was once a Twonk.

*Incidentally, she’s pretty sure the term Twonk was originally a happy combination of the the word Twat and Plonker. How fortunate, if a little unkind.

** In her experience the Angel has found the Twonk distribution to be very much lower in contractors. Not consultants however who are, in the same way as Architects, Twonks by the very nature of what they do.

*** This is most likely due to the fact that most managers are themselves Twonks.

**** She suggests a ration of 1:3 as being the maximum acceptable NT3 ratio. Unfortunately a ration of 1:10 or higher appears to be the norm.

***** Picking a different flavour of Agile is a classic Twonkism.