Inertia in the interface

What makes software hard to change? As a developer, it’s easy to focus on the internal properties of the software system. The code needs refactored, the framework is old, we need more tests, or else fewer tests. If your software is in production, these are not the biggest obstacle to change. The important changes are …

Read moreInertia in the interface

Code and Coders: components of the sociotechnical system

TL;DR: Study all the interactions between people, code, and our mental models; gather data and we can make real improvements instead of guessing in our retros. Software is hard to change. Even when it’s clean, well-factored, and everyone working on it is sharp and nice. Why? Consider a software team and its software. It’s a …

Read moreCode and Coders: components of the sociotechnical system

Provenance and causality in distributed systems

Can you take a piece of data in your system and say what version of code put it in there, based on what messages from other systems? and what information a human viewed before triggering an action? Me neither. Why is this acceptable? (because we’re used to it.)We could make this possible. We could trace …

Read moreProvenance and causality in distributed systems