Towards Innovative Projects

Kouichi Kishida

SRA, Tokyo

@ EuroSPI-2011

My first encounter with creative process

• When young, I was a lazy student of astronomy.

• I’ve almost lost my interest in science.

• But studied hard abstract painting.

• My teacher was German painter Paul Klee.

Analysis as Concept

• November 14 1921, Klee said:

“The main purpose of artist style of analysis is different from analysis in science. We are not breaking down given masterpiece, into components, but study the PROCESS of creation”

Another famous quoteof Paul Klee

• “Art does not reproducing the visible things, rather it makes invisible things visible”

Klee and Software

When I came into the world of computing in early 1960s, those words of Paul Klee were good guiding principle for me as a young programmer, because the essence of software is the process, and the programmer’s job is to make invisible process visible for users.

The First Wrong Step

• Software engineering was born after 2 NATO Workshops (1968 Garmisch, 1969 Rome)

• Waterfall paper by Royce (1970)

• ICSE started (1975)

• I was getting involved into international software engineering movement

Engineering !?

• There were only a variety of material engineering disciplines around us to be useful to prototye a model of software engineering.

• But, “Waterfall Paper” indicated that these material engineering model can not fit into software process.

We need to do

De-“Software Engineering”

• This was our message to ACM Workshop

on Future of Software Engineering

Research (Nov,2010 in Santa Fe)

• There will be no future in Software

Engineering which has been based upon

traditional industry production paradigm

Future Vision

• But, software development is setting the

trends of today’s social culture

• Mode of software production is becoming

the dominant mode of overall industrial

production today

Immaterial Labor

Maurizio Lazzarato, 1996

• Our thought was stimulated by an essay

written by an Italian sociologist M.Lazzarato.

• It showed a philosophical framework to

understand and analyze post-Fordism

production

• Now immaterial labor becomes the new

dominant mode of production

What is it ?

• Produce the informational and cultural contents of a commodity– Create services, knowledge, communication

– Involve skills of cybernetics and computer control

– Define and fix cultural and artistic standards, fashions, tastes, consumer norms, and public opinions

– Satisfy the affective needs of users: feeling, passion, satisfaction, excitement, and sense of connectedness

Our Job

• Software development is a typical example of

immaterial labor

• As a product software takes a form of CD

• Bur material form is not important.

• Informational and cultural contents in the CD is

the essence of software

Value and Quality

• There are Three spheres of software value and

quality

– Objective sphere

• by prediction and control

– Social sphere

• through communication and interpretation

– Subjective sphere

• aesthetic and emotional experience

Product vs Process

• In “Objective” sphere, we take a product-oriented

perspective

• But in “Social” and “Subjective” sphere, we need

to take a process-oriented perspective

• Value and quality of software is determined by

the process of using and evolution of the

product

Producing Software

• To use is to produce– Barrier between developer and user disappears

– Requirement changes rapidly

– There is no correct system to be built

• To produce is to generate new needs and

requirements

– Enrich and alter technological, social and cultural “realities” of users’ process

– Ever-changing requirements are the beacons of success

Innovation !?

• Fordism production– Mass production of standardized commodities

– Innovation lies in the production system

• Toyotaism production– Production responding variety of market needs

– Innovation lies in the distribution system

• Immaterial Production– Production of new subjectivity and social reality

– Innovation lies in the creation of new demands

New Guiding Principlesof Innovation

• Polyphony

• Openness

• Motivation

• Difference & Repetition

• Rhizome

Polyphony (1)

• Mikhail Bakhtin analyzed Dostoevski’s

novels and found two important principles:

“Polyphony”

and

“Unfinalizability”.

Polyphony (2)

• In Dostoevski’s novels a number of characters keep discussing various philosophical issues of human life

• Story comes to end at some point

• But, their dialogues do not come to the final conclusion

• It will be continued in reader’s mind

Polyphony (3)

• In a software project members will discuss various technical or managerial issues

• Project comes to end at some point

• We must have some tentative conclusion, but it is not the final one

• Everybody should bring the unsolved issue in their mind to next project

Polyphony (4)

• Professor M.M.Lehman has already notified in his Software Evolution Dynamics Theory that the process of software evolution is a multi-level, multi-loop, multi-agent feedback system which involves a number of stake-holders inside.

Openness (1)

• Lessons from history of ancient China–Always innovative idea are brought

from outside of the city wall

–By groups of wandering philosophers like Confucious or Menfis

–Typical example of the success of open-door management style was the first emperor on Qin dynasty

Openness (2)

• Community without open window for exchanging information with outside world will easy to loose its vitality

–Georg Simmel in his famous essay on “The handle of a vase”

Motivation (1)

• Main character in a project is not manager, but developers.

• Manager is responsible to motivate developers for innovative action

Motivation (2)

• German artist Joseph Buoｙｓ said:

– All human being are artists.

– It does not mean that anyone can be a great painter

– But inn any activity of human being, there are opportunity for creative action

• Manager should encourage his project members to recognize such opportunities

Difference (1)

• It never happens that same things are repeated again. Only the difference is repeated.

Gilles Deleuze

• In such a difference, there will be opportunities for improvement or innovation

Differenxce (2)

• Software engineering has been too much focus on the repetition– Typical example: CMM

• It is an observer’s viewpoint to look repetition and drew “should-be” process out of it

• Practitioners only looking at present “as-is” process

Repetition (3)

• It is important to look at the difference directly, not through the identical repetitions.

（Gilles Deleuze）

• For example: Structured programming

– Dijkstra, Jackson, Kishida

– Results were functional modularization

– But their original purpose were differnt

Rhizome (1)

• Maybe we need to have a new model for software process.

• It seems that the metaphor of “Rhizome” proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatari seems to be a good candidate for us.

• Reference: “Thousand Plateau” by Felix Guatari and Gilles Deleuze.

Rhizome (2)

• It is a new metaphor replacing tree-structured thinking framework

• Horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground.

• Typical example is a network of bamboo root.

Rhizome (3)

• Connection and Heterogeneity: Any point canbe connected to anything other, and must be.

• Multiplicity: Only treated as a substantive,"multiplicity" that it ceases to have anyrelation to the One

• Rupture: May be broken, but it will start upagain on one of its old lines, or on new lines

• Cartography: A "map and not a tracing". Notamenable to any structural/generative model

Rhizome (4)

• How can we implement a rhizome type organization or project?

–Maybe underground

• What will be a rhizome type process model?

–Process without starting point or without central database !?

A Poem

Famous Japanese poet Matsuo Basho (18th century) wrote:

- In the autumn sky, there is a

flower that bird or butterfly never

knows

Innovation !

I want to think about INNOVATION that we have never experienced.

Thank you!