| > Almost all problems are really people problems, and people problems can only be solved by communicating with other people. I must dissent. You are right that many problems look like people problems. But in all honesty, we have no clue how to solve people problems. Talking can sometimes work, but it's not a panacea. Otherwise parliaments would have solved all problems by now. A shockingly large amount of time, you can solve people problems by turning them into technical problems, and thus amenable to technical solutions. To give a silly example: if people keep walking in on you when you are on the loo, a flippable keep-out sign or a simple lock on the door is a much better solution than talking to the intruders. Less silly: if people keep breaking your build, you might be tempted to say that the solution is to clearly communicate with them to let them know that breaking the build is not OK. The technical solution is to set up a pre-merge check that makes sure everything compiles and your automated tests succeed. Guess which of the two approaches works better in practice? Especially when people are under stress to deliver? (Know, if your co-workers find ways to deliberately bypass the pre-merge checks, _and_ also keep breaking the build; then this should probably be treated as a people probably. Your company should give them a warning once, and then probably fire them on the next offense.) |