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More From "Play As Exploratory Learning"

Until today, my reading of Mary Reilly’s Play As Exploratory Learning had been limited to occasional stolen glances into Cem Kaner’s library, but a copy of this out-of-print book arrived today. Browsing (that is, a little exploratory reading) yielded this (from Chapter 3, “An Explanation of Play”, page 117): “The pursuit of the rumored goodness and usefulness that play might have for man is plagued by the difficulties inherent in … Read more

"Breaking" code

Jason Gorman is an interesting guy, and has a lot to say. I agree with lots of it, especially his iconoclastic position on agilism. This time, I’d like to disagree with two paragraphs in a recent blog entry. The second one first. But I suspect in 5-10 years’ time, as test-driven development becomes more popular and teams become more ambitious in their testing efforts, test developers will be in great … Read more

Heuristic: Tenets vs. tenants

Here’s a heuristic: when someone is describing (or, especially, dissing) some practice or methodology, don’t bother taking them seriously unless they know the difference between tenants and tenets. Examples abound.

Maps and Plans

Over the last few months, I’ve been wrestling with a book called Sensemaking in Organizations, by Karl Weick. I’ve got bogged down in it from time to time, but it’s fascinating. Weick describes sensemaking as having seven properties: it’s grounded in constructing or enhancing the identity of an individual or group; it’s retrospective, or based on “meaningful lived experience”; it’s “enactive of sensible environments”, which is kind of circular; it … Read more