On Friday, December 17, 2004, at 9:00:22 AM, Steve Bate wrote:
>> Or what? My basic reaction to dividing people is "Don't". Let's hear
>> some ideas that push in the other direction, just for fun.
> When you react to the notion of dividing people, is the dividing
> defined as categorizing by knowledge, skills, aptitude, or some
> other criteria? If so, my reaction would be that although there
> are risks, this type of dividing is often useful. In the best case,
> it allows people to do what they do well with support of others
> doing what they do well. Categorization and it's close relative,
> association, are two of the key functions of the higher parts
> of the human brain. It gives humans many unique and valuable
> capabilities compared to other animals. Whether it's sport
> teams, Sun Tzu's soldier types, XP roles, MBTI, or the myriad
> other categorizations, this dividing is as pervasive as metaphor
> in human experience.
The human mind categorizes and associates all the time. It does it
rather poorly, which is why all Jews are penurious, all Christians
are fanatics, all Arabs are terrorists, all Irishmen are drunks, all
managers are stupid, and so on. Fact is, categories are very
approximate and highly inaccurate, and too stable over time.
The individual knows better than her manager or some other "up
front" divider what she can and can't work on, what she is
interested in today, what she wants to learn about today, and so on.
Therefore I prefer to mix the people together and let them figure
out how to divide the work.
Furthermore, this approach is mathematically preferable to dividing
the people ahead of time /in every case/. As soon as we divide the
resources applied to a single problem (writing this program), we
create dependencies. One group needs the work of another in order to
proceed, and so on. These dependencies cannot be balanced perfectly,
since people do not divide infinitesmally and vary in performance.
Therefore there will /in every case/ be queing at one place in the
network, with idleness at one station, and unused inventory building
up at another.
Specialization is for insects. -- R. A. Heinlein.
Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
The central "e" in "Jeffries" is silent ... and invisible.
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