Distributed Thinking

Communication is a key part of every software analyst’s work.  Some of the time we write formal documents such as design specifications or descriptions of coding standards. We write operational documentation for users and for support staff.  We write blog posts that describe our work, and we write comments in our code and e-mails to our colleagues.   We present our ideas in meetings, in formal presentations and informal discussions. So it is important to pay attention to these skills, so that we can communicate more effectively.  There are training courses to help us with the basics.  As with any other skill, we can learn through reading about specific techniques, looking at other people’s work, and reflecting on our own work. (In his book Patterns of Software , Richard Gabriel advocates that reading poetry is a good way to improve our writing skills.  His arguments, on page 149, are worth reading for the virtues they espouse whether you read poetry or not). In this post, I describe on