Software Craftsmanship Summit: First Reactions

Yesterday I attended the Software Craftsmansip Summit hosted by 8th Light.  I'm still processing everything we did and talked about, so I thought I would write down some of my initial impressions.  One of the questions I had in the back of my mind was "what is the summit trying to accomplish?"  Paul Pagel's open invitation to the summit talked about finding a consensus about what software craftsmanship means, and then creating a guild or organization to represent the ideals of software craftsmanship.  But the question that Corey Haines and I brought up toward the end of the day is "what problem are we trying to solve?"  It was exciting to be a part of this group of people who all shared many common passions about quality, learning, and mentoring.  It was tempting to imagine that we might be at an historic gathering, which happened to include a couple of the authors of the Agile Manifesto.  But as the day went on, I became increasingly skeptical about why software craftsmanship would need anything similar to the Agile Manifesto or the Agile Alliance.  I'm not saying that I don't want to be convinced otherwise. Nor would I mind at all if the rough draft of values and principles we sketched at the end of the day evolved into a significant document.  I'm just struggling to see what value that document is going to provide.

I was thrilled to see us spend quite a lot of time talking about apprenticeship.  We actually spent the first half of the day telling our own apprenticeship stories and looking for common themes.  This was a little nerve-wracking for me since I'm done writing (this edition of) the book, so if any themes were identified that contradicted the Apprenticeship Patterns, I'd be in a tough spot.  Thankfully, I found myself in familiar territory, and I had to bite my tongue to not call out the different pattern names as people were describing them.  David Chelimsky even quoted Pat Metheny's seminal Be the Worst statement, and I didn't even say a word. :)  As I was driving back home, carpooling with Jake Scruggs and Joseph Leddy, we discussed that one of the benefits of a software craftsmanship organization would be that it may be able to spread the word about apprenticeships.  This aspect of the day is sticking with me most, and I'm hoping it's not just because I've invested so much of myself into "apprenticeship" and therefore I have a vested interest in seeing apprenticeships more widely adopted.  I'm hoping it's sticking with me because apprenticeships are good for our industry, and therefore they're ultimately good for our customers and end users.

So, right now, my takeaway from the summit is a question. Why aren't there more apprenticeship programs out there?  Or if there are, why are we not hearing about them?  I suppose this is the problem that I'm most interested in helping to solve.  My Call for Apprenticeship from 16 months ago is still on my mind quite a bit, and I'm disappointed I haven't seen more movement in the right direction.  I'm hoping that as the apprentices that come out of Obtiva's and 8th Light's apprenticeship programs make their own waves that it will open people's eyes to the power of a strong(er) apprenticeship.