Chapter 1. A Cooperative Game of Invention and Communication


A fruitful way to think about software development is to consider it as a cooperative game of invention and communication.

The first section asks the question, "What would the experience of developing software be like if it were not software we were developing?" The purpose of the section is to get some distance from the subject in order to explore other ways of talking about it.

The second section reviews the broad spectrum of activities called games and finds the place of software development within that spectrum. If you are already familiar with zero-sum, positional, cooperative, finite, and infinite games, you might skim rapidly through the first part of this section. The section continues with a comparison of software development with another team-cooperative gamerock climbingand two common comparison partners, engineering and model building.

The third section examines the idea of software development as a cooperative game of invention and communication more closely. It considers the primary goal of the gamedelivering working softwareand the secondary goalor residue of the gamesetting up for the next game. The next game is altering or replacing the system, or creating a neighboring system.

The final section in the chapter relates the ideas to everyday life.

A Cooperative Game of Invention and Communication

SOFTWARE AND POETRY

29

SOFTWARE AND GAMES

31

 

Kinds of Games

31

 

Software and Rock Climbing

32

 

A Game of Invention and Communication

34

 

Software and Engineering

35

 

Software and Model Building

36

A SECOND LOOK AT THE COOPERATIVE GAME

37

 

Programmers as Communications Specialists

37

 

Gaming Faster

38

 

Markers and Props

39

 

Diminishing Returns

39

 

Sufficiency for the Primary Goal

40

 

Sufficiency in the Residue

42

 

A Game within a Game

43

 

Open-Source Development

43

WHAT SHOULD THIS MEAN TO ME?

44




Agile Software Development. The Cooperative Game
Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321482751
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 126

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