Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Aristotle and the Definition of Work
Aristotle, having sough knowledge at the feet of Plato, was also an icon of big thinking. After already establishing species categorizations in biology and many other accomplishments, he set his mind on a new topic - work.
How does work get done? How do our own thoughts get translated into work getting accomplished?
Aristotle found a sculptor that he respected, and decided to observe him doing his work. Aristotle put the aspects of the work that he saw being accomplished into four different categories:
- the effort of the sculptor in doing the work
- the plan or methodology the sculptor was following, shaped by his years of experience and his long apprenticeship when he was younger
- the materials going into the work, like the stone block, the tools, the brushes
- the benefactor of the work, the person who had commissioned the sculptor and without whom this entire project could not happen
Aristotle named these aspects of the work "causes." We must take the meaning of this word in context, because it is not the same as the "cause and effect" term we use today. In Aristotle's thinking, these causes were more like aspects or forces at work in this situation. To be completely accurate, you could call them "entailments."
Efficient Cause - the effort of the sculptor
Formal Cause - plan or methodology
Material Cause - raw materials and tools
Final Cause - benefactor
This example of the sculptor is very useful to examine how work gets done. Let's try applying it to the creation of software.
For a software project being done in-house, let's say, what are the correlations of each Aristotelean "causes:"
Efficient cause - this is the effort of the team doing the work - the programmers, designers, database administrators, requirements analysts, project managers, testers, technical architects
Formal Cause - the methodology the team is following. However, it's much more than just whether we're using Agile, Unified Process, waterfall, etc. It's everything about how we work and plan. It turns out to be a multi-layered set of instructions that come largely, not from an Agile textbook, but from our own experiences of what works and what doesn't. The plan we follow and "how we work" depends on who is on the team.
Material Cause - Ah, this is a little tricky. What are the raw materials of software development? Yes, the development boxes and IDEs are our tools, but what is the equivalent of our "stone block." The material cause of our software is actually our own thoughts. Software comes from the minds of the analysts, designers, programmers, testers. And we are interpreting what comes from the minds of the end users, the businesspeople who will use our application.
Final Cause - This is also not as simple as it seems. Sure, our end users are the final cause. But what about the executive stakeholders? The ones who pay the bills? And sometimes the people who own the data for the application are not the ones who will use it (like in an Executive Information System). Then who is the final cause? A project team needs a clear final cause. One group of businesspeople who are charged by the company with making the decisions for this application. It might be a steering committee or something similar. They are the final cause.
Let's go back to the sculptor for a minute.
This gets really interesting when we think of the best practices concept in terms of the sculptor.
Imagine you have a master sculptor and a novice sculptor doing their work side by side.
You watch them both, and they seem to be doing the work exactly the same way. They put the chisel on the rock, chip a little away, then move the chisel, chip again, then step back, look at it, move in again, chip again.
But, when they are finished, you can definitely tell the difference. The master sculptor's work looks beautiful and lifelike. The amateur's looks ragged and lopsided.
So, how do you teach the amateur the "best practices" of the master?
This is where it gets goofy. I just imagine some Accenture guy coming into the room and examining EXACTLY how the master holds the chisel, measuring the number of times the master steps back from the statue to look at the big picture, putting little pit marks into a second chisel so it matches the master's chisel.
Then the Accenture guy goes to the amateur and teaches the "best practices" to him. Voila! The result is --- the same thing. The amateur's sculpture is not helped by holding the chisel in a different way, or by stepping back more often, or with the additional pit marks.
And the Accenture guy gets fired - as usual.
So what is the difference between the amateur and the master?
Here it is. (We need to now revisit the four causes.)
The master does one important thing that the amateur doesn't do yet. Remember, as the sculptor, he is the efficient cause. His tools and the stone are the material cause. His plan/methodology is the formal cause. And the final cause is his customer.
As the master (efficient) is working with the stone (material), he is constantly revising his plan (formal) based on what he sees happening as he moves toward what the benefactor (final) wants.
Bit by bit, he changes what he is doing based on what he sees is happening. It might be shaving off a bit here, or being more gentle there. He adjusts his plan constantly, or, you could say, iteratively and incrementally.
It's one thing to say that the sculptor is sculpting iteratively and incrementally. Of course he is, so is the amateur.
But the master is also revising his methodology iteratively and incrementally too. The amateur is not. The amateur starts out with his plan and runs with it. Once he gets to the end, he realizes his mistakes, adjusts for them and tries to make a better sculpture next time, but this sculpture remains a mess. The amateur might see what is happening much later and try to "fix it" with some late changes, but it won't work.
Once the amateur realizes that he needs to be changing his game plan constantly, revising what he thinks the next set of steps are, he's moved to a much higher level. And it has NOTHING to do with "best practices," the chisel grip, the big picture step-backs, or anything else. He will naturally do those things right once he can take the leap of iterative/incremental plan changing to heart.
How does work get done? How do our own thoughts get translated into work getting accomplished?
Aristotle found a sculptor that he respected, and decided to observe him doing his work. Aristotle put the aspects of the work that he saw being accomplished into four different categories:
- the effort of the sculptor in doing the work
- the plan or methodology the sculptor was following, shaped by his years of experience and his long apprenticeship when he was younger
- the materials going into the work, like the stone block, the tools, the brushes
- the benefactor of the work, the person who had commissioned the sculptor and without whom this entire project could not happen
Aristotle named these aspects of the work "causes." We must take the meaning of this word in context, because it is not the same as the "cause and effect" term we use today. In Aristotle's thinking, these causes were more like aspects or forces at work in this situation. To be completely accurate, you could call them "entailments."
Efficient Cause - the effort of the sculptor
Formal Cause - plan or methodology
Material Cause - raw materials and tools
Final Cause - benefactor
This example of the sculptor is very useful to examine how work gets done. Let's try applying it to the creation of software.
For a software project being done in-house, let's say, what are the correlations of each Aristotelean "causes:"
Efficient cause - this is the effort of the team doing the work - the programmers, designers, database administrators, requirements analysts, project managers, testers, technical architects
Formal Cause - the methodology the team is following. However, it's much more than just whether we're using Agile, Unified Process, waterfall, etc. It's everything about how we work and plan. It turns out to be a multi-layered set of instructions that come largely, not from an Agile textbook, but from our own experiences of what works and what doesn't. The plan we follow and "how we work" depends on who is on the team.
Material Cause - Ah, this is a little tricky. What are the raw materials of software development? Yes, the development boxes and IDEs are our tools, but what is the equivalent of our "stone block." The material cause of our software is actually our own thoughts. Software comes from the minds of the analysts, designers, programmers, testers. And we are interpreting what comes from the minds of the end users, the businesspeople who will use our application.
Final Cause - This is also not as simple as it seems. Sure, our end users are the final cause. But what about the executive stakeholders? The ones who pay the bills? And sometimes the people who own the data for the application are not the ones who will use it (like in an Executive Information System). Then who is the final cause? A project team needs a clear final cause. One group of businesspeople who are charged by the company with making the decisions for this application. It might be a steering committee or something similar. They are the final cause.
Let's go back to the sculptor for a minute.
This gets really interesting when we think of the best practices concept in terms of the sculptor.
Imagine you have a master sculptor and a novice sculptor doing their work side by side.
You watch them both, and they seem to be doing the work exactly the same way. They put the chisel on the rock, chip a little away, then move the chisel, chip again, then step back, look at it, move in again, chip again.
But, when they are finished, you can definitely tell the difference. The master sculptor's work looks beautiful and lifelike. The amateur's looks ragged and lopsided.
So, how do you teach the amateur the "best practices" of the master?
This is where it gets goofy. I just imagine some Accenture guy coming into the room and examining EXACTLY how the master holds the chisel, measuring the number of times the master steps back from the statue to look at the big picture, putting little pit marks into a second chisel so it matches the master's chisel.
Then the Accenture guy goes to the amateur and teaches the "best practices" to him. Voila! The result is --- the same thing. The amateur's sculpture is not helped by holding the chisel in a different way, or by stepping back more often, or with the additional pit marks.
And the Accenture guy gets fired - as usual.
So what is the difference between the amateur and the master?
Here it is. (We need to now revisit the four causes.)
The master does one important thing that the amateur doesn't do yet. Remember, as the sculptor, he is the efficient cause. His tools and the stone are the material cause. His plan/methodology is the formal cause. And the final cause is his customer.
As the master (efficient) is working with the stone (material), he is constantly revising his plan (formal) based on what he sees happening as he moves toward what the benefactor (final) wants.
Bit by bit, he changes what he is doing based on what he sees is happening. It might be shaving off a bit here, or being more gentle there. He adjusts his plan constantly, or, you could say, iteratively and incrementally.
It's one thing to say that the sculptor is sculpting iteratively and incrementally. Of course he is, so is the amateur.
But the master is also revising his methodology iteratively and incrementally too. The amateur is not. The amateur starts out with his plan and runs with it. Once he gets to the end, he realizes his mistakes, adjusts for them and tries to make a better sculpture next time, but this sculpture remains a mess. The amateur might see what is happening much later and try to "fix it" with some late changes, but it won't work.
Once the amateur realizes that he needs to be changing his game plan constantly, revising what he thinks the next set of steps are, he's moved to a much higher level. And it has NOTHING to do with "best practices," the chisel grip, the big picture step-backs, or anything else. He will naturally do those things right once he can take the leap of iterative/incremental plan changing to heart.
