Dear Readers.
Today I want to talk to you about something I discovered over years of working and experience.
Also something that I can see in the world repeating over and over again. Not just in Software business but also in History in Human nature in Physics and Systems.
So let’s see what I’m talking about.
What is Chaos?
Chaos is a state of utter confusion. Chaos is the opposite of order. Chaos is when everybody does what they want without thinking about the consequences.
Does Chaos hurt? Of course it does. From Chaos there can be no production. From Chaos there can be no profit. From Chaos there can be no life.
Is that really true? It sort of is. Remember the Big Bang. Initially it is believed that there was order. The universe was a perfect gem with the four forces ( Gravity, Electromagnetic, Weak Nuclear and Strong Nuclear force ) united. And then a Higgs came around and made it BOOM! And so there was Chaos. And from Chaos, with a snowballs chance, there was life.
So then why is Chaos bad?
Companies usually don’t have the time or the money to wait for that Snowballs chance to come to flourish. So order is required for life to become great.
Take for example the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang. He was the one uniting China. Sure, he killed a LOT of people. And China is oppressed every since. However he did introduce a lot of new concepts and reforms which wouldn’t have been possible in the Chaos. And today China is one of the leading nations if not The.
Before Emperor Qin begun his journey there were 9 different ways of writing down the world ‘sword’ in chinese. This was unacceptable. After the Emperor succeeded he unified the writing and made communication easier.
Striving for order
People have always strived for order. For simplicity. For unification. For ‘one’ instead of ‘many’. We have stories that say there is power in many. Physicist are continuously trying to unify the laws of physics in the beautiful little equations. Like Einsteins law of relativity. That small equations revolutionised the world. And it came from unification.
So then what are the downsides of unification?
Everything comes with a price of course. The unification bought oppression to China and the loss of the individuum. Fantasy and thoughts got all sacked. People become like Borgs. However the Country evolved immensely under one banner. But what does this all have to do with Testing?
Applying Order
Think about your company. Think about how your developers work. Does everybody use a different building platform? Does everybody use a different operating system? Do they run the same command to build your environment? Did you have any kind of problems because of that? I’m sure you did.
There are benefits of it. At least you will know if your application is working in a different environment. But do you want that? Is it worth it? After all we live in an age were there are numerous possibilities, environments, languages, command line options etc etc.
But think about it. Did the diversity bring you more profit or did it hurt you more? Which one is applicable for you? If your developers do not have the ability to properly govern them selfs then you need order. You need a unified language, you need a unified environment and unified processes Agile or not Agile. Your company wont be successful if you want to be Agile just because it is the Current Trend. You need to be pragmatic about it and applied were it is reasonable. There is nothing wrong in introducing a standard or a code review process or a coding guid line or some standards here and there if it HELPS.
There will be friction. People tend to resist change. There will be losses. But a unified company is a strong company. And when the new guy arrives? He wont have any kind of a problem installing your software and beginning working on it because he doesn’t have to go around and scoop information together from at least ten people and do it in an eleventh way at the end.
Last Words
So think about this. Is your company strong enough to uphold Chaos and make it flourish? Or is it a bunch of people doing whatever they think is right because of a sense of individuality which they don’t want to give up?
This is for you to decide.
And as always,
Thanks for reading.
Gergely.