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Mind the Gap!


By Andy Hunt & By Dave Thomas
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April 15, 2000 —  (Page 1 of 3)
Alight from an underground train in London's Bank station and you'll hear a deeply concerned recording advising you to "mind the gap." That simple recording must have saved thousands of hapless commuters from flinging themselves mindlessly into the 6-inch space between the train and the platform.

Perhaps the recording would be better employed in our software development bullpens, because there's a gap there that is wider and has caused far more stumbles. It's the gap between skills and experience.

Developers and managers in the field are desperately trying to keep their skills current. They're lapping up the low-level trade books-how to write programs in language XYZ, how to configure a Web server, how to install Linux, whatever. At the other end of the spectrum, they're working in environments where they have to learn their organization's methodologies, whether Rational Unified Process, Capability Maturity Model, Extreme Programming or something home-grown.

But the industry is still frustrated. With all these skills, project teams continue to make the same old mistakes-mistakes in design, mistakes in implementation and mistakes in deployment.

WHY?
The teams are gaining experience, and they're gaining it the only way they can-by making mistakes. There's a wide gulf between skills and experience. Would you want to be flown by a pilot who has read all the books he can find on flying but hasn't actually sat in a plane until today?

Developers can know all the ins and outs of the language they're using. They can have walls papered with Microsoft or Sun certificates. They can fill in the forms and follow the practices of their methodology. But that's not programming. And programming is what developers spend most of their day doing.

Programming is normally regarded as a personal skill, something that's honed on the grindstone of practice. Sit in your cubicle and hit those keys, and you'll gradually get better and better.

Is there any alternative? Is there a way to fill the gap between technical proficiency and professionalism? Yes. You and your team can accelerate the learning process. Here are proven factors that help teams cross the experience gap more quickly and with fewer stumbles.



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