Know How To Grow

One of the SevenPillarsOfCred - see also EvolutionaryDelivery and ModelingTrap. Like a number of the other pillars it's intended to have more than one meaning - in a helpful way.

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From American Programmer January 1997:

"KnowHowToGrow refers partly to the vital importance of choosing the right developers to deliver. There is real skill involved in successfully growing a team, from a few members with considerable know-how in relevant and complementary areas of design to a greater number who can successfully fulfill their roles once the framework is in place.

This pillar also refers to the great potential in CRED development for training - for skills transfer from the more experienced veterans to the younger members of the team. We have shown in practice that this is an excellent way of growing the framework designers of the future."

--RichardDrake and NickSimons

[See also CredFramework]

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There are at least three intended meanings enclosing each other in fact:

1. the right overall know-how to grow the system that the customer will view as successful at each agreed milestone
2. the right initial know-how to grow the team that can then grow the successful system
3. the right know-how and communication skills to grow each individual's skills and understanding of the business and goals to grow a successful team to grow the successful system - and thus even more successful development teams in the future.

It's been a real eye-opener seeing how much PairProgramming can add to some of these old aspirations in the last twelve months.

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In SevenPillarsOfCred I refer to the fact that by 1996 I found most object and other software methods "incredible". I wanted something credible. What I would now call a SkeletalMethod? (by which I mean something a little different from lightweight method or LowCeremonyMethod as defined by AlistairCockburn). That would have something useful to say about all software development situations Objective would ever be involved in but acknowledged its limits and the need for individual fleshing out in each situation.

One of the most incredible and unhelpful assumptions behind most methods as I saw it then was the very static and demeaning view of people's skills and roles within successful teams. "This method will allow a large enough number of monkeys to type Shakespeare, as long as you pay one of our highly skilled consultants to chant industry standard platitudes to them and strobe them with unverifiable object diagrams" wasn't actually said but something like it seemed implicit.

As in much else of CRED I wanted to re-assert instead the blindingly obvious: the vital importance of the individual people and skills transfer within the project team over time, including the business people - growing the team alongside the software. In some ways I'm happiest about KnowHowToGrow of all the pillars. It's the one that provides room for the real fun, the best jokes, the greatest challenges and the most important development, that of people.

--RichardDrake