London Software Craftsmanship community - first meeting

There was a great turnout for the first meeting of the London Software Craftsmanship community, close to a full house at our gratious hosts SkillsMatter.  The following is a summary of the first meeting talk and discussions.

The founders of the LSCc David and Sandro, laid out their ideas about software craftsmanship for the community to chew over and discuss - which members did with great vigour especially towards the end of the evening.

David and Sandro set the tone by annoncing that they are asprining software craftsmen and started the community to bring together lots of ideas share experiences as to what that means.

Some scene setting by David, discussing how programmers are often used just like typists, when really development is an artistic process.  Terms like software factory are not what the industry is about and focused on the wrong things.

Warm-up
There was a bit of exercise to warm the audience up, getting us all to stand up to figure out just what sort of audience was attracted to this event.  It was good to see a mixture of developers, testers, coaches, analysts and even a CEO.  There was a big contingent of Java developers and quite a few .Net devs even thought there was the LDNUG event the same time.  It was good to see developers from the python, perl, android and even Erlang space too.  There was a nice mix of age groups, quite a few in the over 30 camp but also university students and recent grads.

The talk proper started with an example of how software engineering practices were introduded at NASA, allowing them to  deliver 42,000 lines of code with only 17 bugs - the only problem being this cost them $35 Million per year and projects were always delivered late.

Raising the agile model, this was portraied as a very productive time for those teams that really understood the principles and practices that agile estolled.  Software craftsmanship was not portraied as a replacement for agile, but perhaps as a way to help us get back to thinking about the core principles and practices of agile that may be forgotton as agile spreads and transforms into "wagile".

The good enough approach is not always good enough and it was felt that many agile projects are now, steadily and iteratively producing mediocre software.

The idea
So, is Software craftsmanship the new shiny toy on the shelf that we all want to play with or does it have something meaningful to say?

David introduced a quote by Robert C Martin:

"The original torch of the agile message has changd hands to the software craftsmanship movement"

and refered to the wikipedia entry on Software Craftsmanship.

Delving deeper it was not portraid not as a certification process, a training course, a book, a tool or specific technique.  Simply it is something that you are, the way you approach your work, treating software development as an art, a craft, something you care about.

The Manifesto
The desire to raise the bar of professional software development by practicing it well and heling others learn the craft was expressed in the creation of the manifesto for software crafstmanship:

• Not only working software, but also well-crafted software  -- it should be as easy / enjoyable to work on an old project as a greenfiled one
• Not only responding to change, but also steadily adding value - extending the life of your projects
• Not only individuals and interactions, but also a community of professionals - helping each other develop our craft
• Not only customer collaboration, but also a productive partnerships - we need to help our clients / employers to value better understanding and better solutions

So what does it take to craft software?
Offered up were the concepts of creativity, judgement, theory and practical skill.  Understanding that continuous improvement was seen as the most highly valueable goal, as there are always more things to learn.

One of the most common ways to practice the craft was to undertake deliberate practice - via coding and architectural kata to practice the are, coding dojo to learn language design, and code retreats to learn good design via test first development.

The Journey
Software craftsmanship talks about a journey from apprentice, to journeymen and then master.  The apprentice experiences more learning than teaching and is mentored closely by a master.  The journeyman has responsibility to take on projects unsupervised and works for many different masters to broaden the range of their experiences.  It was commented that the journeyman was best placed to move the industry forward as they have a broader view than a master.

Sandro talked about how you dont have a control over becoming a master - it is driven by the community who look to certain individuals that are perseved as being highly experienced in a particular area.

These labels whislt interesting to talk about how you travel along your journey are not in themselves an important aspect of software craftsmanship.

In summary
The great conversations continued in the "SkillsMatter" pub, The Slaughtered Lamb and there was a lot of merry making going on there after the event.

For myself, a simple way of thinking about all these concepts software craftsmanship is to consider being "responsible", taking actions that are the most responsible thing you could do at the time within the constrains put upon you whilst still delivering value.