A world that is perfect "The wise men understood that this natural world is only an image and a copy of paradise. The existence of this world is simply a guarantee that there exists a world that is perfect." Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist simulation
Data Farming A Research Paper onlinelibrary.wiley.com Miners seek valuable nuggets of ore buried in the earth, but have no control over what is out there or how hard it is to extract the nuggets from their surroundings. ... Similarly, data miners seek to uncover valuable nuggets of information buried within massive amounts of data. Farmers cultivate the land to maximize their yield. They manipulate the environment to their advantage using irrigation, pest control, crop rotation, fertilizer, and more. Small-scale designed experiments let them determine whether these treatments are effective. Similarly, data farmers manipulate simulation models to their advantage, using large-scale designed experimentation to grow data from their models in a manner that easily lets them extract useful information. An information service society farmingdatasimulation
Agile as Trauma An Essay by Dorian Taylor doriantaylor.com The Agile Manifesto is an immune response on the part of programmers to bad management. Many a corner officeIntramural brownie pointsFeature factories agilemanagement
Many a corner office I want you to consider instead the possibility that Waterfall came to exist, and continues to exist, for the convenience of managers: people whose methods are inherited from military and civil engineering, and who, more than anything else, need you to promise them something specific, and then deliver exactly what you promised them, when you promised you’d deliver it. There exists many a corner office whose occupant, if forced to choose, will take an absence of surprises over a substantive outcome. surpriseplanning
Intramural brownie points Features don’t work, in the sense that they can be easily gamed. A brittle and perfunctory implementation, done quickly, is going to score more intramural brownie points over a robust and complete one. If the question is "does product A have feature X?" then the answer is yes either way. features
Feature factories We use the term feature factory as a pejorative to designate companies addicted to adding features, while accumulating incalculable so-called technical debt. This situation is driven by management for the convenience of marketing, and I am skeptical that a more faithful application of Agile principles will correct it. Indeed, I suspect Agile processes are constitutionally vulnerable to this kind of compromise. The presence of a feature can only indicate to a user if a goal is possible, behavior will determine how painful it will be to achieve it. ux