This document summarizes the key ideas in a longer article about software engineering and companies. It discusses how software is disrupting every industry and how every company is becoming a software company. It emphasizes that companies must master data in order to have effective strategies and structures. Managing the tacit knowledge ("mētis") of software engineers is important, but companies should not become too insular or complacent. The document advocates for breathing data to improve strategy, structure, code, and competitiveness so companies can "eat rather than be eaten." It provides 3 action items linking to additional resources on related topics.

1. Breathing Data, Competing
on Code ^mostly this
Venkatesh Rao
ribbonfarm.com
vgr@ribbonfarm.com
February 22, 2012

2. competing on coders

3. band-aid

4. people over process

5. software is eating everything
-- Marc Andreessen
every company is now a software company
-- David Kirkpatrick

6. most software is crap

7. Release!
Expand Refactor, lower
Feature Set, entropy, pay off
increase entropy technical debt
Version n Version n+1

8. 99%
1%

9. software is eating everything

10. #OccupySoftware!

11. Software is eating the world and every industry is being
dissolved, disaggregated, disrupted and de-engineered in
an acid rain downpour of Big Data and Free Agency
coming down from CLOUDS that are forming via DATA
evaporation from a world that is an ocean of sensors,
and Windows Phone
iPhone and Android apps and untamed social streams of
^
Facebook life, and when the Internet of Things happens
and it is all connected up into a single giant software
application a Chinese virus will mutate into a self-
improving AI and the Internet will become SENTIENT and
TAKE OVER ALL THE DRONES the whole pile of crap will
collapse under its own weight and KILL US ALL.

12. technical debt is growing faster
worldwide than it is being paid off

13. Everyone knows that debugging is twice as
hard as writing a program in the first place.
-- Brian Kernighan

14. Action Item #1
listen to this talk
by Alan Kay immediately
http://tele-task.de/archive/lecture/overview/5819/

15. people over process
this principle is not
generally wise outside of
software engineering

16. one size does not fit all

17. enlightened governance with a
wise policy of exceptions and
customization of processes to
specific situations

18. rational governance with a wise
policy of exception management
and customization of processes
to specific situations
principles of forgiveness

19. great engineers ask for forgiveness,
not permission
This is a meaningless bromide if you
always forgive or never forgive
principles of forgiveness are about when
you forgive
if you get them wrong something far
worse than rule-breaking will happen

20. perfect rule following
Work-to-rule: an industrial action in which employees do no more than
the minimum required by the rules of their contract, and follow safety
or other regulations to the letter to cause a slowdown rather than to
serve their purpose.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work-to-rule

21. sprint tempo burndown charts
daily standups code commenting
test-driven forking norms
development working code over
who decides when it is okay to
usability testing documentation
standrds communication norms
break which rules and why?
version control dflss certifications
retrospectives code review
user story semantics meeting rituals
story points tracking patent applications
requirements open source policies
pair programming spiral development

22. governance
culture
narrative | archetypes

23. what you forgive depends on
where you are in the story

24. Gustav Freytag, 1863

25. Venkatesh Rao, 2011

27. good judgment emerges from a rich
sense of narrative situation awareness,
not formulaic applications of narrative
structure theory

28. narrative | archetypes

29. what you forgive depends on
who you are dealing with

30. tinker, tailor soldier, sailor
richman, poorman, beggarman, thief
after software eats
everything
hacker, hustler, coder, admin
moneyman, dataman, uxman, thief

31. the best guide to software archetypes can
be found within software culture itself

32. Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the
Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time
Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In
The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class,
supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the
technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the
other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and
they are running the show, because they understand
how everything works.
-- Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning was the Command
Line

33. dwarves seek beauty
don’t force them to do ugly

34. a good wizard makes you feel
in charge
a good wizard-wrangler
realizes he is not

35. ninjas understand your ideas
better than you do
defer to their judgment

36. samurai prize honor and loyalty
never stop fighting
for them

37. elves understand magical realities
that are invisible to you
do not disturb

38. the exceptional nature of software
culture arises from the fact that software
engineers build their own tools
software culture is guild-like

39. Action Item #2
read this book
immediately
http://tempobook.com

40. // end flattery and pandering
// begin evil manipulation

41. data

42. When art critics get together they talk
about form and structure and
meaning. When artists get together
they talk about where you can buy
cheap turpentine.
-Pablo Picasso

43. the turpentine effect

44. form and structure and meaning

45. Action Item #3
read this book
immediately

46. “Thin
Simplification”

47. the kind of knowledge required in such
endeavors is not deductive knowledge
from first principles but…mētis…the kind
of knowledge that can be acquired only
by long practice at similar but not
identical tasks
-- James Scott, Seeing Like a State

48. great programmers form a
subculture based on mētis
respect it

49. but not too much

50. self-congratulation is not strategy
mētis insularity complacency

51. ...organizations which design systems
... are constrained to produce designs
which are copies of the communication
structures of these organizations.
-- Melvin Conway, 1968

52. structure follows strategy
-- Alfred Chandler, 1962

53. when software eats everything
and every company is a software
company strategy follows data

54. managing mētis means
mastering data

55. breathing data makes better strategy
better strategy makes better structure
better structure means richer mētis
richer mētis means better code
better code means better company
better company lets you eat rather than be eaten

56. #1 http://tele-task.de/archive/lecture/overview/5819/
#2 #3