Back to basics: Demanding reading

The following article came to my attention: The Satir Change Model.

An article that includes references to the works of Virginia Satir and Gerald M. Weinberg is a promising reading. Of course, the direct reading of the seminal works by those authors –among other luminaries– would be the best reading. Though the closer to the seminal authors, the more demanding the reading would be.

That kind of demanding reading is what I am talking about when I say that we —our profession— need to go back to the basics.

Gerald M. Weinberg

One of the finest thinkers on computer software development has passed away on August 7, 2018.

«...computer scientist, author and teacher of the psychology and anthropology of computer software development.» — Wikipedia

☛ http://www.geraldmweinberg.com

☛ http://secretsofconsulting.blogspot.com

☛ https://www.facebook.com/gerald.m.weinberg

☛ https://twitter.com/JerryWeinberg/

☛ https://www.facebook.com/terra.ziporyn.snider/posts/10156674749391457

Reading and digesting classical authors

‘You just narrated part of my story exactly! But there is a second part of my story that led to my current ‘reflective’ stage in my professional career on software design. That second part includes reading and digesting some other kind of texts by classical authors (Dijkstra, Dahl, Hoare, Knuth, Meyer, Tanenbaum, Myers, Mills, Weinberg, Parnas, Gilb, DeMarco, Abelson and Sussman, etc.). This current stage feels like another career entirely different than the career in my previous part of my story. Nowadays, I talk to others about that in the context of my Reflective Developer Program’.

Thought and direct experience

Being wrong, and become aware of that, are two different instances of reality. For me, the conjunction of those instances is a joyful experience. For example, I was wrong, very wrong, about who can possibly be able to know something and teach it to others. It is good to know that I was wrong. I just recalled this because of a question about the role of a Scrum Master and direct experience on code design:

Full conversation: Honestly Curious.

«…I used to think —decades into my past— that “the only way” —careful! Bigotry alarms at full capacity here— somebody could ever know and ever teach about something is by the sole means of direct experience. Period. Simple. End of discussion.

Nowadays, —since about 28 years ago—, I reflect that the subject matter of knowing and the subject matter of being able to teach or help others turned out to be not that simple. And the discussion is wide open, and the debate keeps very active among authorities on those subject matters.

There are cases where somebody can, in fact, learn a lot from the experiences reported by others and by pure sheer thought based on sound theoretical schemes. So, now I think that a fully functional Scrum Master —or anybody, for that matter— can, in fact, help others effectively without the sole means of direct experience.

Does it make sense?»

The growth of a feature — Twelve years later

The original «The growth of a feature» post is about twelve years old. Yet, the history of iterative and incremental software design and delivery, accordingly to Craig Larman and Victor R. Basili, began about 70 years ago.

Art vs Work

Software design & computer programming is my art, not my work. That’s why my trend is to enjoy thinking more about it and doing more of it. The referred talk by Cory House reminds me the brief note I wrote back in 2005: I like it! Also this one: I like it even more!

Becoming an Outlier, by Cory House.

A recent survey

There is this other survey with interesting questions about challenges and strategies for successful agile methods adoption:
http://agileresearchnetwork.org/take-the-agile-in-non-agile-environment-survey/

It reminded me that I have seen, time and again, individuals and teams facing enormous struggles to understand themselves and then change values, principles and practices in their own culture in order to ship better software. In my little window of reality around, many cases look hopeless. But, sometimes, there are individuals eager to think and behave differently and who are actually looking for hints to learn new professional principles and values. For those cases, I usually give the following answers to questions like these:

Question 1: Have you encountered challenges to improve software engineering principles, values and practices?

Part of my answer: many challenges, but —this could surprise you— many come from IT people (architects and developers, and their managers) who are unwilling —or unable— to unlearn and relearn.

Question 2: Which strategies would you suggest to face the challenge of shameful levels of unprofessionalism in software development projects?

Part of my answer: We already know: there is no silver bullet. But, one sensible strategy is to start a long journey of un-learning and re-learning the own computer software career. Get back to human basics: un-learning and re-learning basic philosophical and critical thinking, deep study of philosophy of science and engineering, and other basic stuff in the Humanities; for instance, anthropological research as a preparation for doing cultural critical analysis.