Welcome to the Lounge

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It was not lost on the people doing the work (the programmers) that the way things were going was not sustainable. Throughout the 1990s, professionals across the software industry would meet periodically and share ideas. What do some of these emerging ways of thinking have in common? What are ways that we can improve the way software is written? People recognized that things needed to change, but the ideas had yet to coalesce in a meaningful way.

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As a result, top-down, fixed strategies—however well executed—no longer predictably yield the results we expect.

From the perspective of the incumbent accustomed to doing business in a more predictable world, this type of business environment may seem chaotic. Only by adjusting and learning better, faster, and more economically than their peers can companies gain an “agile advantage.”

To start embracing a new way of operating, it is necessary to think beyond the simplifications useful in a more predictable context defined by early thinkers such as Frederick Taylor. As the world has changed to become more complex, the way we approach business strategy needs to reflect a more adaptive view of the world.

Dean Roddey wrote:

Can anyone think of any truly amazing or original or game changing software that wasn't created by a smallish team of people who were mostly left alone (or ignored because they were in a company so big no one upstairs know what they were doing?)

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This takes us back to Professor Watts’s initial observation: what is it about cities that make them so robust and virtually indestructible, compared to companies? Dr. Watts theorized that the way cities are managed helps them embrace uncertainty in a way that allows them to benefit, rather than suffer, from unexpected events. By creating boundaries within which people can work together toward a common goal, the cities’ leaders can influence—rather than control—an outcome, while allowing for creativity, collaboration, and serendipity to naturally happen.

When companies want to get more innovative, we typically hear of chief innovation officers and special initiatives in which employees are directed to submit ideas and vote for interesting concepts. People are rewarded nominal prizes if their ideas are selected, and a nice article in the company newsletter is written. This sounds nice enough; the only problem is that it does not work. Internal innovation programs are notoriously ineffective. An MIT study found that 80% of innovation is a result of coincidence and chance. You simply can’t “force” innovation.

raddevus wrote:

The signatories were primarily interested in finding ways to create environments for writing better software while the profession found itself in a crisis.

raddevus wrote:

I'm fairly sure this guy could tell you exactly what a crisis is

MSBassSinger wrote:

1 - In my experience (in multiple companies), the implementation of agile has led to a bureaucratic layer of project managers and business analysts with no proficiency at software engineering nor the software development lifecycle. The end result are projects that take too long, lean towards mediocrity, and cause the customer (internal or external) to blame the developers, whose hands were tied by the aforementioned project managers and business analysts.