The Fundamental Truth Behind Successful Development Practices: Software is Synthetic
Summary
Near the groves of standing desks, across from a pool of information radiators, you might see our treasured artifacts - a J-curve, a layered pyramid, a bisected board - set alongside inscriptions of productive principles. Since we can’t use a pull request to change the laws of physics (and a newer, better version of gravity will not be released mid-cycle), it’s worth spending the time to plan, analyze, and think things through. In code we weave together ideas and intentions to solve our very real problems, learning and uncovering possibilities with each thread, allowing knowledge to emerge and pull us in different directions. As an industry, we are defining and refining our own set of "Synthetic Management" approaches that allow our teams to close the gap between the act of creation and the moment of experience, connecting people to their work and to the contexts they inhabit. Meanwhile, successful organizations actively facilitate flow between the analytic and synthetic contexts: interfaces are created from which the business can gather needed information; social learning eases reporting requirements and routes around organizational hierarchies; useful abstractions like OKRs provide direction without disrupting execution.