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I’ll show you mine if you show me yoursBob Marshall posted on Twitter: I want to get rid of the habitual naming of methods, like #agile #kanban #lean
I replied with: @flowchainsensei sounds like a revolutionary idea. I’m in. now all we need is a name
and he replied: @AndyPalmer I want … but seems sadly impractical or contrary to the way humans work
In 1956, George A. Miller wrote a paper arguing that the conscious mind, the part that contains our inner voice and that does the reasoning processes, can handle 7 ± 2 items at a time. My view is that, in order to be able to function within these constraints, we learn to group similar things together so that they take up less processing space. For example, if I want to remember a six digit number, it might be easier for me to remember it as 3 two digit numbers than as 6 individual numbers. Very familiar numbers, such as the phone number of my parents only take up one space. It’s like I’m carrying a fixed number of boxes, all of which are the same size, but in which I can store things that (in my own mind) are grouped together. One thing I’ve noticed though, is that I begin to speak of the ideas inside in terms of the labels that I’ve added to the boxes. In terms of hard facts, like numbers or addresses, this doesn’t really make much difference, however, when the ideas and opinions in the boxes are much more subjective, this can lead to confusion and disagreements (or sometimes, vigourous agreement )
When we put labels on things in the boxes, it becomes much quicker for us to talk in terms of the labels. However, although we may have boxes labelled in a similar way, that does not mean that the contents are the same. The box in my mind labelled “Scrum” may match a great deal of the contents of the box that you have labelled “XP” or that someone else has labelled “Lean”. The good thing about these boxes in my mind is that I can have an object appear in more than one of them. I might even place these three boxes into another box labelled “Common sense” (although I strongly suspect that the box with that particular label is guaranteed to be vastly different between every person) As with my conversation with the removals men, I can get into a heated discussion with someone if we’re talking in terms of the labels on our boxes.
The only way we can truly reach an understanding is if we recognise that we’re arguing over a label, and open our boxes to compare contents. Sometimes, I even forget what I have stored in my boxes. I might only be talking about my memory of the things that I think I stored in the box. Opening the box and reviewing the contents, especially when someone else is doing the same, can help me to find new ways of categorising the ideas within. We might even find a common ground and start a revolution. So, next time we don’t see eye to eye about the memories of the contents of our boxes, remind me “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours” August 14th, 2010 | Category: Uncategorized |
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Andy Palmer, A. Ebbert-Karroum. A. Ebbert-Karroum said: interessiert: I’ll show you mine if you show me yours bit.ly/apGdGV [...]
Wow, what a very good article – I'll recommend to read it at least twice.