Notes from Hammock Driven Development

While reading one of Jon Udell’s blog posts, I came across the concept of Hammock Driven Development.

The first three slides caught my attention. “Step away from the computer”, Rich says. “If we are not solving problems, what are we doing?” he asks the developers, in his keynote.

When was the last time you thought hard about something for an hour, a day, a month or a year?

I spent the next 40 minutes watching the video, taking a few screen captures of the slides and writing down some of the points I resonated with.

• Problems of misconception (are not problems of implementation)

• Analysis and Design is about identifying the problem to solve and coming up with a proposed solution for solving it.

• Book: How to solve it

• “We get good at what we practice”

• State the Problem

  • Say it somehow

    • Out loud in conversation, or

    • Write it down

• Understand the Problem

  • What do you know?

    • Facts

    • Context

    • Constraints

  • What you don’t know?

  • Are there related problems?

• Be Discerning (critical)

• More input, Better Output

  • You can’t connect things you don’t know about

  • Read in and around your space

  • Look(critically!) at other solutions

• You should look at least two solutions to your problems before you decide about the trade off

• Sitting and contemplating (with your eyes closed) – mind’s eye time

• Try to work on one thing each day

Meta:

This post was vegetating in my list of blog drafts. I decided to publish it and fix it.