[Updated on further reflection – originally published 8/12 10:21 am)
Now I’d like to reflect a bit on Kevlin Henney’s excellent keynote. People didn’t ask so many questions at the end, but as I heard from people around me, his talk was a lot to absorb and operated on many different levels (makes me think of Alistair’s Jazz conversations). He challenged some of the fundamental assumptions that had been at work throughout the week. These have to do with “value” as a motivator for workers and whether or not we learn from failures, as the “fail fast” methodologies seem to imply.
Kevlin began his talk saying it was about Code and then talking about how Code reveals itself when it breaks. Below is an image of broken code on a sign in the Madrid airport.
The second level this operated on for me is that sometimes in failures people reveal themselves. Look at the failure closely and you learn much more about what that software object, or, that person, is constructed of.
Work Different 