meta

[109]

...Complicated stuff is predictable, but requires expertise to understand. A watch is complicated. If you’re programming, complicated stuff will be well-understood, done before, not going to change as you develop it. Writing yet another CRUD form probably falls into this space.

In a complicated environment, you sense, analyze and respond. You say, “Let me have a look at this problem and I’ll tell you how to solve it, because I’m an expert at this.”

(I have a theory that most devs get really bored by doing the same predictable but complicated thing over and over again. We tend to turn it into open-source or automate it, reducing it to the far smaller but more complex problem of how to do the automation or use the open-source. Devs are drawn to complexity like moths to a bonfire. And we make it when we don’t have it…)

I reckon that if everything in software development was merely simple or complicated, Waterfall would work very well. You’d be able to set out to achieve some goal, work out how to do it, achieve the goal and say, “Job done.” Software doesn’t consist of only simple and complicated stuff, though. So let’s have a look at the other two domains...

http://lizkeogh.com/2012/03/11/cynefin-for-devs

Comments

[ivan-gandhi.livejournal.com]

Rich Hickey, Simple vs Easy