- My Perspective
- About the Book
- A Note on Terminology
- Your Opportunity
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Your Opportunity
Unless you are indeed among that rare class of practitioners who are already building software as well as software could ever be built, you have some improvement opportunities. We all need to continuously enhance our capabilities: as individual practitioners, as project teams, and as organizations. We all want fewer scars.
A junior developer named Zachary Minott (2020) made some thoughtful observations about how he outperformed more experienced developers. Minott described an ethic of acknowledging what he didn’t know, systematically going about learning, and putting the new knowledge into practice. He said, “If there is any superpower that I do have, it’s the ability to learn fast and immediately apply what I learn to what I’m doing.” Minott discovered the critical mechanism for continuously wending his way toward mastery of his discipline.
We all need to continuously enhance our capabilities. We all want fewer scars.
Perhaps you decide to take a class to learn a new skill or enhance your current way of working. While you take the class, the work continues to pile up. It’s easy to ignore what you’ve learned and continue to work as you always have in the rush to get caught up. That’s comfortable, as your current approach has sufficed so far. But that’s not the way to improve.
I adopted the approach of identifying two areas on each project to get better at. I would set aside some time to learn about those topics and try to apply my new understanding. Not every technique worked out, but my approach allowed me to gradually accumulate skills that have served me well.
I encourage you to do the same. Don’t merely read the book; take the next step. Decide how you and your colleagues can apply the practices you read about and what you hope they’ll do for you. Build a list of practices that you want to learn more about and then put them into use. That way, you’ll come out ahead in the long run.