Category Archives: Musing

Reflections, observations or just musing on something that sparked my interest

Is Software Craftsmanship a Type of Martial Arts?

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Code Kata, Coding Dojos, and White Belt Programmers. What is it all about?

In part seven of my series on software craftsmanship I have a look at how software craftsmanship is sometimes wrapped in the language of martial arts.

I confess from the outset that the use of martial arts language really put my off software craftsmanship. But behind the kung-fu I found fairly uncontroversial practices.

I’ll have a quick look at the three software craftsmanship practices I found with a strong martial arts flavour: Code Kata, Coding Dojos, and White Belt Programmers. Then go into a more general discussion of what it is about.
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Software Craftsmanship is skilled software development in small scale production

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In this, the fourth post in my series on software craftsmanship, I interpret Wikipedia: Craft in the context of software development. I’m doing this because Ade Oshineye: Software Craftsmanship – More than just a manifesto
recommended the wikipedia definition of craft although Ade generally avoids dictionary style definitions for software craftsmanship (Hoover and Oshineye, 2009).
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Software Craftsmanship is not Software Engineering

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In part two of my series on software craftsmanship I take a look at how Peter McBreen, in his book entitled Software Craftsmanship (McBreen, 2001), sets up software craftsmanship in opposition to software engineering. Actually he does say that "Software craftsmanship is not the opposite of software engineering or computer science. Rather, craftsmanship is a different tradition that happily coexists" (p. xvi). But the rest of the book undermines any claimed coexistence.
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Management on the Ground

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You have to keep your feet on the ground when others want to put you on a pedestal. After a while on a pedestal, you stop hearing the truth. It’s filtered by the henchmen, and they read you so well, they know what you want to hear. You end up as the queen bee in the hive, with no relationship with the worker bees.

Bill Burns, CEO of Roche Pharmaceuticals
quoted in Goffee & Jones (2006), p. 43

One of my project managers recently mentioned that, despite being a programme manager, my own management style is quite "hands-on". In the sense of being on the ground with my team rather than in the technical sense although the two often come together. This approach has held me in good stead over the years.

Others, like Bill Burns quoted above, have realised dangers of being distant from the people doing the work and the corresponding benefits of being on the ground. I thought I’d take a quick look at some of these previous advocates of being on the ground:

  • Military Commanders on the ground
  • Management by Walking Around (MBWA)
  • Toyota, Lean and Genchi Genbutsu

I’ll wrap up by having a quick look at the Agile practices that help me be on the ground.
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Is Software Craftsmanship some code-obsessed mishmash of martial arts and carpentry?

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Software Craftsmanship is some code-obsessed mishmash of martial arts and carpentry or plumbing

Ade Oshineye: Software Craftsmanship – More than just a manifesto

"Software Craftsmanship" is one of the big catch phrases in the software development community at the moment. There is an Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship, a few books (Hoover & Oshineye, 2009; Hunt & Thomas, 1999; Martin, 2008; McBreen, 2001), conferences and seminars, and lots of blog posts.

But what does software craftsmanship actually mean?
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Agile: I Prefer Hype to Ignorance

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The good news is that Agile has crossed the chasm (Moore, 1991). On the down side there has been, and is, a lot of hype and hyperbole around Agile, Lean, Scrum, XP and Kanban, etc, etc. In particular, and despite the Agile Manifesto, the meaning of the term "Agile" has become very diffuse. So much so that there are many people, like a colleague of mine and one time Agile fan, who now says "I don’t talk about ‘Agile’ any more; it doesn’t mean anything".

I find the hype annoying, and Agile’s loss of meaning exasperating, but I also think it an inevitable part of progress.
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Side Bets and Sweeties in Organisational Change

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People don’t resist organizational change! – People resist being changed!

The Communication Toolbox

My current programme is using new, bespoke software to drive organisational change. So I need people to change what they’re doing. A lot of people. As a first step I need them to adopt our new software. So I am always looking for ways to push the software roll out. In an earlier post I described one approach we use for encouraging adoption: Foot in the Door Technique. In this post I look at two other methods – which we call "Side bets" and "Sweeties".
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