[clug] Think Pieces

[steve jenkin]

For any of you who’ve actively contributed to Open Source projects in any capacity, even as informed users providing feedback,
these ideas aren’t new or novel.

People and Teams come first, everything else falls into place around that.

Managers, Deadlines, Deliverables / Customers / “Point of Difference", detailed Project Plans with Critical Paths, Gantt Charts and ‘output measures’ don’t improve code or hasten the work of great programmers.
Yet they’re the staple of Commercial coding & design, where the focus in on “The Process” not The Right Team & People.

Sinofsky is probably worth listening to, and for people who’s whole experience is “Commercial Off the Shelf” software,
his analysis of the fundamental Disruption that the Pandemic is forcing on all parts of lives, not just “Business”,
will be insightful, perhaps revolutionary to some.

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Coding is not ‘fun’, it’s technically and ethically complex
	Walter Vannini, 600 words
		is a digital consultant and researcher. 
		He is interested in IT culture against technocrats and data governance, and is based in Milan, Italy. 

	23-Sep-2016
	<https://aeon.co/ideas/coding-is-not-fun-it-s-technically-and-ethically-complex>

	In an ever-more intricate and connected world, where software plays a larger and larger role in everyday life,
	it’s irresponsible to speak of coding as a lightweight activity. 

	Software is not simply lines of code, nor is it blandly technical.

	In just a few years, understanding programming will be an indispensable part of active citizenship. 

	The idea that coding offers an unproblematic path to social progress and personal enhancement 
	works to the advantage of the growing techno-plutocracy that’s insulating itself behind its own technology.

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Creating the Future of Work
	Steven Sinofsky
	19-Jun-2021
		32 min read, 8,250 wds		[LONG]

	From Trauma to Opportunity

	<https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/creating-the-future-of-work-449c66707e35>

	What comes next for work? 
	Thanks to technology, we are returning to a new normal faster than most anyone would have predicted.

	The role of software and more broadly technology is now central to what and how a company operates,
		 and also to what a company provides in the market. 

	Software defines businesses the way manufacturing defined post-War businesses.
	 Of course, making things, extracting things, and moving them around the world remains remarkably difficult in its own right, 
	but all of those businesses are now constrained and enhanced by software as a primary source of innovation and operation. 

	Every business is now a software business. 
	Finally.

		The answer is not to change a little,
		but to change a lot.

	In the workplace, the biggest change has been the move of technology from a supporting role to a central role.

	It isn’t just that messaging became more important or that video meetings began to work, 
	but that people quickly realized these can actually be superior. 

——————

	If these patterns sound familiar it is because they are the patterns of a failed response to a disruptive change. 

	The idea that everything stays the same except for a few changes around the edges caused every incumbent to lose in the face of step-function change. 

	The ideas in this essay might not be the best experiments to run and the suggestions might even sound ridiculous, 
	but whatever you do next make sure to change a lot because employees, customers, and shareholders are all changing.

	We’re emerging from a generation-defining event and
	there’s every reason to think in the years to come that the reinvention of work and
	what it means to be a corporation
	will change as much going forward as those did in the period following the return from the War.

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--
Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA

mailto:sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin