Meeting Monday 16th – recollections

I got to the pub just a few moments after seven and got myself a pint. I was well into a chess game (Keres-Botvinnik Moscow 1956) when Andrew arrived. I was updating him on the last meeting (Nancy and AndyM were there and both have said the'll try to write a report for the blog/Wiki) when Hugo arrived and claimed his J2O from me.

Hugo has been trying to write a blog about Systems Thinking as it applies to software development and was previously involved in a patterns group that used to meet in Leicester. He found out about Something In Nottingham from the accu-general mailing list.

We talked about how to get developers in the area networking and amongst other ideas discussed putting together a one day conference and scheduling talks in the evening. I doubt we have the resources for the former, but the latter is achievable. But do we know what would interest other people?

We also discussed a dysfunctional development process where the developers pass the completed system to a testing group and any defects found are fixed by a third group of maintainers. There seems to be a serious lack of both feedback and feed-forward here! The original developers won't find out what doesn't work and the maintainers have to guess the intended design. And I thought
Three Phantastic Tails was bad!

We didn't come up with a fix by the time I left – but we did establish that the management hierarchy was fluid following a merger. So some of the usual resistance to changing managers responsibilities and reporting may not apply. I think it would be interesting to talk to whoever is responsible for all three departments and whether this situation works for them.

Another discussion was about writing blogs – and how to stops posts turning into theses. My approach is to write little and often. So I'll stop here.