Red Squirrel Reflections Dave Hoover explores the psychology of software development

During our Stand Up Meeting this morning I lost my patience with our project's architect. We were discussing how to handle when two pairs need to work on the same file at the same time and the implications this has on source control. This afternoon I was talking about the incident with my boss and he gave me some valuable feedback, actually the same feedback my wife has given me countless times: sometimes when I get fired up about something, I can sound very condescending and arrogant. Apparently this is how I sounded this morning.

I know I need to work on this problem. I don't think I'm arrogant (although who really does), but I definitely come across that way at times. I need to somehow remind myself to watch out for the Voice of Arrogance in situations where I am especially vulnerable to it.

Posted by Dave [Link]

I grabbed about two dozen quotes from the Weick and Roberts article. I commented on each quote in a couple sentences and watched for unifying themes. A few of them began to emerge. I grabbed the related comments and started tying them together in a few paragraphs. Over the weekend I was surprised to see some novel ideas emerge. It has been an interesting exercise thus far.

At this point the name of the paper is Heedful Programming: The Collective Mind of Agile Software Development. Not sure if it's a good title, since I have yet to effectively define heedful interrelating or collective mind, let alone heedful programming. I have focused on discipline and peer pressure up to this point.

Posted by Dave [Link]

I read an extremely interesting journal article over the weekend by Karl Weick and Karlene Roberts about Collective Mind. I think it will be a foundational reference for what I'd like to write about.

I'm finding that I can't skip lunch anymore. Pair programming forces you to work hard, and I run out of energy without lunch. A good sign...

Posted by Dave [Link]

After two days of JSP, XML, and configuration hassles, my pair and I finally started writing code today. And we wrote it test-first! She is picking it up very quickly. Much faster than I am picking up the ATG stuff. :-)

Roman and I are talking about setting up an experiment to test the design impact of throwing away a first coding attempt. We're having a bunch of fun lately.

Posted by Dave [Link]

Yesterday we officially began development on the project at work. It was a bit anticlimactic, but my pair and I have both already learned a bunch from each other. I'm excited for what lies ahead.

Posted by Dave [Link]

I am surprised at how much stress I am feeling as the current project nears its official start date. The the team's inexperience combined with my own is conjuring up a lot of fear in me. Fortunately, there are many people who have walked this path before me, and the XP list was very helpful over the weekend.

Posted by Dave [Link]

I'm all excited after reading Sensemaking, Complexity and Organisational Knowledge and finding a reference to Complex thinking, complex practice: The case for a narrative approach to organizational complexity which references both The Social Construction of Reality by Berger and Luckmann and The Order of Things by Foucault, key contributors to the philosophies behind narrative therapy.

I feel like I'm reaching the limits of my research. I've stretched very far, very fast, and now it's time to slowly walk back toward software development, reading everything that I find along the way.

Posted by Dave [Link]

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