Ed Taekema - Road Warrior Collaboration 28.1.2004

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A blog looking at business communication, knowledge management, scripting tools, OS technology news and other things of interest to mobile tech workers. As I find interesting news this will also contain pointers to thoughts related to configuration managment, change management and general software development.

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2004-01-28

Quantity and Quality

Via Ming the Mechanic referring to Kevin Kelly's Blog's review of Art and Fear:

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pound of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality," however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

I think this is generally true when we learn anything new. At some point it is necessary to get some early experience and possibily suffer through some painful failures before it all comes together. Seems to especially apply to collaborative tools. It takes too much effort if it is at all possible to design what it should be in advance. Better to get started early with your thought leaders and let the effort develop momentum and smarts.

posted at 23:56:32    #
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