Initial Thoughts...

[anthonyjsargeant]

My 10p thus far, and I’ll caveat that by saying this is my initial thoughts based on reading it this morning. In other words, I’m happy to be corrected on any of the points below.

• As someone with ADHD that’s a lot of text that I’ve had to read four times to start to get an idea of what it is you’re talking about.
• Might be worth putting an abstract at the start to summarise things so that the details fit better with the overall context.
• Some of the points you make refer to cultural issues within software development which need to take into account a much wider context before they can be addressed.
  • The point about language is very interesting and certainly feeds into this.
• Decoupling software teams and giving them autonomy is nothing new. A lot of companies seem to be very bad at doing this.
• Business has taken Agile processes and twisted them to suit business needs rather than the needs of the stakeholders (including those who develop and maintain that code).
• One thing that is apparent is in my experience thus far, software development is driven largely by fear - not necessarily from someone, but by a fear of the unknown. This drives us to abandon new techniques in favour of “tried and tested” ways of working that, at best, serve to slow down development and at worst, delivers big balls of mud ™️
• It seems to me that in order for us to achieve those aims you suggest in your tweet, we need to be free to make new mistakes, and not repeat old ones.
• Psychological safety is king.