Hello all,
The other day I was talking with a logistics professional who expressed his frustration at the difficulty the domain experts (i.e. the logistics professionals) have to transfer their business knowledge to the IT guys.
Does the swordsman need to transfer his knowledge to the blacksmith? Maybe not. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if great advances in sword forging were made by blacksmiths who were swordsmen themselves, or who collaborated closely with a swordsman for years.
Likewise, good logistics software is the product of years of close co-operation between logistics professionals and computer people.
Why do we perceive as a problem the transfer of business knowledge from the logistics professional to the programmer? Why do we not perceive as a problem the transfer of business knowledge from a manager to a management consultant?
The answer is in the complexity—where by “complexity” I mean the number of parts, or the number of features. A sword has only a few parts and features. They may require a lifetime of practice to master making them, but they are a few. Even the most toyish piece of software has tens of parts and features, and a small application has hundreds or thousands. Developing such a feature is easy—if you’ve written just a little bit of code in your life you know that. The skill in software lies in managing the complexity that results by having so many parts.
The amount of knowledge the swordsman needs to transfer to the blacksmith is minimal. Maybe whether a longer or shorter blade would suit him, or maybe whether having a different balancing would provide for better handling.
But if the swordsman were to explain the kinds of movements he’s making in order to get assistance in moving the sword, it would be a vast amount of information.
Actually, this has been done.
Regards,
Antonis