We Need All the Disciplines

From where I sit, figuring out what to build, building it, and shipping it are all part of the art of making software. Many disciplines have emerged through the years to facilitate this work: product, design, engineering, devops, etc. We need all these disciplines to make great, dependable software (granted, in different doses). Each brings different values and judgments; each sees things the others don’t. And including all might mean going a bit slower. Human collaboration may seem less “efficient” than handing the work over entirely to the machines. But inefficiency may be the cost of collaborating with humans, rather than extracting an output from a machine. We gain not only from their judgment and expertise in a particular discipline, but from the relationship, trust, and shared understanding that blossoms from making something together. As the old proverb says: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” Reformulated for today: If you want to go fast,…