We need to slay the Beast
His trembling tentacles everywhere, its contours blurred from constant motion, its burden on your shoulder
When you sleep, he flows in your dreams. When you rest, you are overwhelmed by him. When you work, you are terrified of him.
His name — Chaos. His kin — the thick darkness. His children — Wastage, Loss, and Failure. Chaos — a real king of the world, an evil tyrant whose ties bind you at every step.
Chaos demands victims, every day new ones. Never repleted, takes your strength, takes your money, takes what you have most precious — time. One can not beg him or bribe him. He can not be deceived; you will not pass unnoticed. When you think that this time you have succeeded — he tightens the loop again.
How to defeat the Beast, which you can not look into the face because it has too many? Which derives its force from the guiding principle of the universe — entropy? Which is part of ourselves — because it grows out of nature and is its main ingredient?
The answer is simple — you can’t
That’s why, in the whole wide world, in every office and every workspace you will hear the question “What’s going on?”.
This is a question you ask yourself when you join a team involved in a project. This question is asked by the project manager who would like to know at what stage the works are. Every new employee asks about it.
And there are also customers, investors and a lot of other people who need to find out what is happening to the project, what has already been done or how much has to be done. They want to have all API Documentation at hand; they need accesses, links to external tools and everything that makes up a full, comprehensive and detailed information resource about the project.
Everyone wants to have less chaos, yet again they have the same amount of it
What about information? Could the increasing amount of information be the right answer? Let’s produce more and more information, let everyone have full insight at every detail, let them know everything about everything. Let’s have a solid temple made out of data squeezed out of every tiny component of the project.
That just doesn’t work
The information does not reduce the area of ignorance. Quite the opposite — adding information to the cauldron with chaos is like putting out a fire with gasoline.
Is it hard to imagine? Sure. We did not believe either.
But we did the research. People from Eyedea took part in it (of course), but to expand the field of vision a little, we’ve joined our friendly IT company — Pioner Labs.
Here’s what came out:
Two essential conclusions arise from this study.
First of all — there is no real shortage of information. Second — there is a lack of knowledge.
Nope. No contradiction here
This statement may seem contradictory, but this contradiction is only apparent. Information is not knowledge — it is just one of its components. Knowledge, besides information, also consists of context and experience.
Therefore, it looks like the problem lies not in collecting data resources, but rather on their proper connection and distribution. Putting it simply — what turns information into knowledge is the structure.
So to slaughter the Beast, or at least to make his blood, we need a way to effectively and quickly combine information, the context of action and experience in knowledge — and to make this knowledge as familiar as possible.
Ok, don’t you have enough of this whole philosophy?
Let’s talk about particulars. If anyone of you, my dear readers, had the opportunity to be involved in the process of building a digital product, probably knows the story.
Here it is: There is a company, the company has an office, the developers are sitting in the office, and they are doing something. Very, very important something.
What exactly are they doing?
It is not easy to find out — developers usually do not have time to explain; they are overwhelmed with work. At most, they will provide you with vanilla information, strictly limited to the component they are currently working on. And what about the rest of the elements?
Maybe you will set up the meeting, and do some planning? You will hear a lot of jokes about the corporate manner of wasting time on stupid meetings. Plus, of course, expect a lot of ostentatious exasperation in the meantime.
So maybe you should take a tour from desk to desk and ask questions? You will not know anything, except that you are a deadbeat who walks around the office and bothers serious people.
At some point, getting knowledge seems almost impossible, even if it is not about your personal curiosity. There are people in the world who have ordered this project. They pay for it. They have the right to know.
Hold my beer!
Anyway, this is not about that the everyone should confirm every step with a memo; it does not make sense. The point is that working on extensive, complex projects (let’s face it — other projects are not that attractive) was not an obnoxious chore caused by things that can be solved.
Nothing kills creativity more, like a daily struggle with all the nonsense that makes you feel tired just thinking about them.
It’s about eliminating chaos. It’s about slaying the beast — no more, no less.
It has to be done — and we will do it.
You’ll see.
