You can't be "competent" at an undefined task

Edward G Nilges — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 08:37:31 -0800

See my blog if you like, Chris.

Selecting for reflection

chrishmorris — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 12:25:38 -0800

My project is a complex one. We are currently in transition. Having finished most of the work on the back end, we can put more resources into responding to user input. It has also become clear that some of the user communications we have had are more "suggestions" than "needs". For these reasons, it is time to raise our game from developing features to designing solutions, to use Dan North's expression.

Team members vary in how well they are responding to this challenge. Some of us, like me, are career programmers, and others have a first training in the application domain. The response is not what I first expected. The programmers understand very well that they need to find out about the domain, whereas the domain experts are focussed on the programming, which for them is the hard part.

The people who are performing least well here are the least reflective. Being very competent at a defined task is not enough in a situation of flux.

This should be a selection criterion. So my question is, how do I identify the more reflective candidates, who will grow as the project mutates?

Reflective Practice

chrishmorris — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:43:16 -0700

When we are actually coding, we usually are completely alone. I'm currently on a five year project. No one can do as many as a dozen of them in a career. These factors make it hard for us to learn by experience.

developer.* Blogs - Reflective Practice - Comments

You can't be "competent" at an undefined task

Selecting for reflection

Reflective Practice