Heuristics Art Show, EuroSTAR 2008
Heuristics Art Show, EuroSTAR 2008
Submitted by noreply@blogger.com (Michael) on Thu, 13/11/2008 - 10:45.Galvanized by Jerry Weinberg's workshop on experiential learning at AYE 2008, I led a tutorial at EuroSTAR 2008 that included an experiential exercise invented by my colleague James Bach. I call it The Heuristics Art Show.
In small groups, people contributed, discussed, and refined headlines and descriptions of some of their heuristics, mostly to do with testing, but also to do with other aspects of life and software development. It was wonderful to tap the collective wisdom and experience in the room, and I think the results were marvelous. Many thanks to all who contributed to the exercise.
The pictures are up there in high-res form. Some of them are a little blurry, but they're all readable if you download the high-res version. One fine day I hope to transcribe them—or maybe a Kindly Contributor could do it.
The Art Show approach reminds me of the positive deviance initiative—a from-the-bottom-up, practice-based approach to process improvement. Wanna get better results in a hurry? Don't bring in the massive, unreadable tomes of "maturity" models; have real people, doing real jobs, share their practices with each other. The PD Web site has a great example; follow the link and check out the description and video of the Palmer Technique.
This kind of exercise will happen again at future conferences, to be sure!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23076491@N02/sets/72157608997920373
In small groups, people contributed, discussed, and refined headlines and descriptions of some of their heuristics, mostly to do with testing, but also to do with other aspects of life and software development. It was wonderful to tap the collective wisdom and experience in the room, and I think the results were marvelous. Many thanks to all who contributed to the exercise.
The pictures are up there in high-res form. Some of them are a little blurry, but they're all readable if you download the high-res version. One fine day I hope to transcribe them—or maybe a Kindly Contributor could do it.
The Art Show approach reminds me of the positive deviance initiative—a from-the-bottom-up, practice-based approach to process improvement. Wanna get better results in a hurry? Don't bring in the massive, unreadable tomes of "maturity" models; have real people, doing real jobs, share their practices with each other. The PD Web site has a great example; follow the link and check out the description and video of the Palmer Technique.
This kind of exercise will happen again at future conferences, to be sure!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23076491@N02/sets/72157608997920373