So theoretically, 20% of the team have just gone through this
learning process. What did they misunderstand? What questions were
they asking their mentors and why. Ask if you can read the notes
they made, and interview them about those notes -- which bits
actually turned out to be useful and which were blind alleys?
Hopefully, that'll quite quickly tell you what level they are getting
stuck at -- whether they have difficulty getting the big picture, or
whether there are specific details that are missing -- whether it's a
navigational problem or an understanding problem, etc.
(I'm hoping "20% of the team" doesn't just mean "1 additional new
grad", but that you might get a breadth of responses)
regards,
Will.
On 7 Nov 2007, at 14:23, Ruven E Brooks wrote:
Let me elaborate a bit on my original request.
1. I'm assuming that most or all of the previous developers/
architects of the system
are unavailable. All that's left are the artifacts, code plus
whatever else. There's no one
to talk to about where to start, etc. or about the overall structure.
2. Imagine that, instead of being a new chief architect, that the
plan is to replace 20% of the
developers on the project every year but not to increase staffing
levels by 20% (which is what
would be required with the current methods of getting people up to
speed.)
3. I didn't rule out active discovery of content. In fact, that's
what people do today in our organization;
they look at the code and analyze the code, using tools of varying
degrees of sophistication.
The problem is, it's terribly time consuming, and the same
discovery process has to be repeated by
each new team member; that's what takes the 6-12 months - "active"
discovery of content.
I'd like to jump start or shortcut the process.
[I note that In educational theory, "active" learning doesn't mean
that you put the students on a desert island and
expect them to actively discover particle physics; it means that
you carefully set up situations in which
the students participate that enable them to learn. I can think
of equivalents for learning a large
piece of software, but developing them requires even more work than
writing the 20 page document.]
Ruven
