[ssf] some thoughts by Alistair Cockburn

[@mparo]

ALISTAIR COCKBURN


"Code is Poetry" not surprisingly then that Alistair Cockburn's 
manifesto touches a certain string. and it certainly reminds you  of a 
similar game proposed earlier, much earlier, by Italo Calvino among 
others (If On A Winter Night, A Traveller...) and of course even earlier 
by Julio Cortázar, my fellow countryman...

:-)


Humans and Technology,
*The Cooperative Game manifesto for software development*

this was published in 1998.

http://alistair.cockburn.us/crystal/articles/cgm/cooperativegamemanifesto.htm


"Software development is a cooperative game, a series of games in which 
people use markers and props to inform, remind and inspire themselves 
and each other in getting to the next move in the game... The endpoint 
of the game is an operating software system, the residue of the game is 
a set of markers to inform and assist the players of the next game. The 
next game is the alteration or replacement of the system, or creation of 
a neighboring system."

 From Cockburn's Definitions

"a series of games": Each software development project leads into a next 
project, whether to extend the first system or to build a neighboring 
system. If we were just going to build one system and go home, we would 
use different strategies than if we have to stick around and add onto 
the system. In particular, we will want to set into place some markers 
and props for the successor team. *Some of those markers and props will 
be people*, and some will be documentation, tests, tools, and so on.
(...)

So that's also our role, *markers*