Here's an essay/paper by Alistair Cockburn: Characterizing People as Non-Linear, First-Order Components in Software Development. Yes it's a long, self-important sounding title, but the paper itself is very interesting. It's a discussion about the various ways that people make software development teams productive or unproductive.
The paper has a lot of insights into human nature, all motivated by the core belief that methodologies that work against the grain of humans' natural tendencies are destined to fail.
I don't have enough experience to know whether Alistair's insights are accurate or not, but they are certainly intriguing. For example, a couple weeks ago I had decided that my company needed to have more communication between the various people involved on a project. So I had decided to try to use wiki-based project plans to help keep track of things and make sure everybody kept in the loop. However, Alistair claims that paper is one of the least effective means of communication (something I knew intuitively, but hadn't managed to apply in this situation). So after reading the paper, I'm wondering whether it might not be a better idea to have people change desks whenever they switch projects, so that people working on related projects can share an office. Maybe then they'd talk to each other more.
In a way, having people change offices seems like an obvious solution. And yet it's very non-traditional. Nearly every company I know of would try to solve a communication problem by instituting a more formal process based upon writing things down. I've worked at several companies that did that. What ends up happening is that someone labors over a document that takes too long to write, and then they mail it out and call a meeting to discuss it. When the meeting rolls around it turns out that most of the attendees didn't bother to read the document ahead of time, or they only skimmed it for 5 minutes immediately before the meeting. That sounds to me like a sign of a really poor methodology.
Anyway, read Alistair's paper. There's lots more there.
Posted on September 21, 2004 04:28 PM
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