Grow to where we’re going

“Plants are movers…. Plants grow to where they’re going.” Frazier, P. & Jamone, Lorenzo & Althoefer, Kaspar & Calvo, Paco. (2020). Plant Bioinspired Ecological Robotics. Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 7. 10.3389/frobt.2020.00079. This is a keynote written originally for a private company. I’ll do it at conferences, including YOW! in September 2020. Short bite: In … Read moreGrow to where we’re going

Define roles by what each person increasingly knows

Say you’re aiming for outcome-based product teams that write and operate software. Maybe you hire for roles in these teams like Software Developer, Product Owner, Designer, Tester. How do you define each role? We usually ask, what does each person do? A typical job description includes: what does the person do? What are they responsible … Read moreDefine roles by what each person increasingly knows

The visible lines of division are not the meaningful ones

Imagine you’ve never cut open a human body before. Nor seen a diagram drawn by someone who has. Back before anatomy textbooks, the organs and systems of the human body would not have been obvious. I imagine asking, what are the parts that make up a person? and getting: head, arms, legs, hands, feet, chest, … Read moreThe visible lines of division are not the meaningful ones

Software development is like geriatrics

Caring for software takes more knowledge than a single person can acquire. There’s the business knowledge that makes it useful, plus the languages and runtimes and infrastructure and deployment. Then there’s security, accessibility, user experience, each interface, availability, observability, scaling, performance, data modeling, testing, networking, etc etc. Every change to the software hits several of … Read moreSoftware development is like geriatrics

Understanding, inside and out

Every company, every team is its own system and works in its own ways. There are universal abstractions, but these are only useful when someone can translate them into the particular context of one company or team. Corporate anthropologists do this. First, they adopt the role of “participant observer.” They get deep into the context … Read moreUnderstanding, inside and out