Maturity is the Key

Do you know why: architecture, leadership, agility, effectiveness are so widely discussed? Because nobody know what they exactly are:) Or precisely: these are as complex as these mean different for different people and every point of view gives us some useful knowledge.

We coach development teams and looking in the past I may observe some interesting fenomenas. Let' see (important: I'm writing about Poland):

8 years ago

Nowadays

Some heard about XP A leader aka PM was non-technical quy Some heard about GoF Patterns There was no terms "clean code", "implementation patterns" well known Some have read "Code Complete" When we talked about programmer soft skills we were understood as weirdoes

Teams declare using Scrum or "our own adaptive agile framework" Most leaders do have a technical background "patterns" is one of most discussed word in many meanings Software Craftsmanship movement encourage to searching for better ways to do what we do and to improveme the craft Honestly, there is so many books about "patterns", "agile", "software craftsmanship", "good enough", "code readability" I cannot handle it Soft skills are widely discussed, but narrowly applied :)

So, we see the craft is changing. Software developers are changing. Nowadays, trainees or couchees are more experienced and educated then eight years ago. Some problems from the past are not problems anymore. But, we are faced with some new challenges.

What I want to say? According to Manfred Spitzer learing takes time (esspecially if we talk about social and soft skills). It is trivial, but not understood enough. We want to get skills and knowledge RIGHT NOW!. But it is impossible. Learning starts with acting based on simple procedures and lead up to contextual knowledge and contextual skills.

The crux is learning takes more time than average project length. Sometimes one expects to learn, let' say, "patterns" in four-days training. One also wants to apply its correctly in the project which is coming soon. But during a four-days training one will get a seed and an individual is responsible for its growth.

So, conclusions:

• Software Craftsmanship is a lifelong challenge
• See your learning goals from the five, ten or more years perspective...
• ...but be aware that every single line of code is a small step leading you to some learning goal? Do you like this goal?
• It is impossible to apply "patterns" or whatever always correctly
• Yes, you will smell the code from time to time.
• Make the failure faster :)