That's a really great post. You write well. I think this sums it up nicely:
we were small enough not to need a collective fiction we had to name.
I think we're of a mind on a lot of these things. Another broad concept that I think ties into this topic is "legibility."^ The "collective fictions" you guys had when you thought you had none were illegible, informal ones.
Dealing with unaknowledged vagueness is something people do really well, in small groups. "Everyone should be polite and respectful" is a statement we understand, even if it's vague. If a disciplinary committee to decide if someone has been polite, then that statement is no longer enough. You'll need legibility, something like a law code.
Going from hacking to RAD to agile is an attempt at legibility, a theoretically understandable and justifiable process for making decisions and writing code.
we were small enough not to need a collective fiction we had to name.
I think we're of a mind on a lot of these things. Another broad concept that I think ties into this topic is "legibility."^ The "collective fictions" you guys had when you thought you had none were illegible, informal ones.
Dealing with unaknowledged vagueness is something people do really well, in small groups. "Everyone should be polite and respectful" is a statement we understand, even if it's vague. If a disciplinary committee to decide if someone has been polite, then that statement is no longer enough. You'll need legibility, something like a law code.
Going from hacking to RAD to agile is an attempt at legibility, a theoretically understandable and justifiable process for making decisions and writing code.
^Stolen from Venkatesh @ ribbonfarm.