Personal Cybernetics: learning from experience
Steve Freeman, OTI
Every software professional makes mistakes, but we lack mechanisms to
share those mistakes and learn from them. This session attempts to
address this by requiring each participant to describe a significant
mistake they have made in their career. This mistake need not be
technical, but we would like to understand the situation in which it
happened and what it tells us about real software development. One
essential point, however, is the papers that blame everything on higher
management, even if justified, will not be accepted; we are here
to learn from our own mistakes. The session will then try to distil
some software facts of life from these experiences.
Principal objectives
The purpose of the session is to share difficult experiences and
some understanding of how to cope with or, better, avoid them.
Intended audience, level of experience
Attendees should be experienced software professionals who have
experienced at least one difficult project and who will admit to
being fallible.
Please sign up first
Every participant must submit a one page note describing a failing
experience from their own career. These will be distributed to all
participants at the start of the session. The notes may be handed
in during the previous day at the conference but we would much
prefer early submission, electronic if possible, to help us plan
the session.
Deliverables
One person will act as a scribe for the session and, together with
any interested participants, produce a poster and, possibly, a
paper.
Steve Freeman is a senior software engineer at Object Technology
International's laboratory in London. He has a PhD from the Computer
Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, and has worked in research
laboratories at Digital and Xerox. Before this he worked for various British
software houses building financial dealing systems. He also holds degrees in
Social Statistics and Music.