Story Telling: Collaborative Software Engineering.
Adele Goldberg · The Journal of Object Technology · 2002
helped, leaving it to the listeners to ask questions and build their own version of the vision.Let me start by telling you three short stories that share a common theme.Kevin's Story.Once upon a time there was a very bright media production manager who was uncertain of his ability to understand the functioning of a very rich software system.Two more technically inclined colleagues sat with Kevin one morning to walk together through the system.Sometimes Kevin would say, "see, here is how we set up a way for the users to talk with one another."Sometimes David would say, "see, that part needs tweaking-we will find the code and make some changes."One time David said, "can't be done.We have a problem."But Gene said, "sure it can…I remember being told that we could pool sets of questions and generate tests."Back and forth, the three debated.While Gene read the manual and made suggestions, Kevin searched the system, until David yelled, "there it is."Job completed in time for Kevin to give the whole company a demo that same day.Green and Red Cards.With 2000 participants with questions to ask the management team, a corporate user conference was about to end with a difficult open Q&A session-difficult because this company's managers often side step the hard questions.But Joe the session leader decided to reuse a process followed at a conference the previous year.Each participant entering the session room was handed one green card and one red card.Whenever anyone spoke, a green card held up meant "my question is being answered."A red card meant "keep talking, I am not satisfied that my question is being answered."Questions were collected on paper and organized by Joe before the session started.Joe read a question and then invited a management team member to the stage to give the answer-standing up, mike in hand, nowhere to hide.As the answer was given, the participants held up their green and red cards.The manager kept talking until only green cards could be seen.Sometimes a lone red card remained; its holder would be called to explain his continued discontent.And then the manager would proceed.Although not all answers were the ones the people asking wanted to hear, everyone left satisfied that at least they got an answer to all the questions they asked.Chewing Gum Timers .Two hundred people were getting together to talk about a difficult problem.The meeting organizer was concerned that some people would dominate the meeting.So he tried a new approach.As each person came to the meeting, he or she was handed 10 pieces of chewing gum.Each piece of gum was worth ten seconds of speech.Whenever someone wanted to talk, he or she could do so as long as there were enough pieces of chewing gum.Every ten seconds, a bell rang.Sometimes, people gave the speaker gum so the comment could continue.Sometimes people gave a good speaker gum so he or she could make a new comment.Quickly, the cost of a speech converged to one piece of gum-ten seconds of interesting sound bite.Each of these stories tells yo u something about a process in which several individuals come together to interact: to share their know-how, to teach one another, to learn something new.In each case, the group dynamic has properties that do not exist in any