Topic: Readme
Among other approaches to effective thinking, Ravi Mohan summarizes a concept introduced by Steven Sample known as Thinking Gray. From Ravi's post:
"In essence, Thinking Gray (TG from now) asks you not to make a decision on something, or choose a side in an argument till you absolutely have to. [...] This refusal to decide lets you avoid three dangerous tendencies - (1) the tendency to filter incoming data to support a pre decided conclusion (2) the tendency to vacillate between two conclusions, depending on who you last spoke to (and how persuasive he was) and (3) most dangerous, the tendency to slant your beliefs towards what you think people around you believe. [...] The skeptic has two mental 'buckets' - one labelled 'I believe' and another labelled 'I don't believe.' The skeptic's policy is that nothing goes into the 'I believe' bucket without proof or a logical, convincing argument. [...] The TG practitioner on the other hand, has no 'buckets.'"
This impressed me as very relevant to one of the useless debates currently raging in our profession about whether this or that software development practice "works" or "doesn't work," and people's unwillingness to accept any form or quantity of evidence supporting the view opposite their own. Maybe we should all learn to think gray, so that we can recognize a good thing when we see it.
Jason Yip, in a comment to his post, Test first from 1971, has a rational answer to another of the useless debates of the day — the furor over the use of the term, "best practice." From a comment following the cited post:
"Perhaps [we need a definition of good practices] similar to how accountants talk about Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). That is, Generally Accepted Good Practice (GAGP). Note that accountants don't even say that what they're doing is the best currently known way, it's just the generally accepted way. And I think that's what sensible people really mean when they say 'best practice.'"
Yet another debate raging in our profession today has to do with the relative merits of process-centric vs agile approaches to project management, governance, and portfolio management. Jeff Sutherland wonders whether the confluence of the two approaches may offer the best of both worlds, provided people understand what sorts of value each brings and how to implement them effectively. Jeff talks about the relationship between CMMI and Scrum, and suggests there are ways in which each can remove impediments to the successful use of the other and that applying the two in concert may deliver more value than either approach alone. Maybe this needn't be a binary choice.
