Email the Author
You can use this page to email Janelle Arty Starr about Anatomy of Communication.
About the Book
What if we used our software modeling skills to build an explicit model for communication itself, using familiar software constructs as a metaphor?
in it's essence, Domain-Driven Design (DDD) is a philosophy and set of techniques for constructing a shared mental model of a system, and translating it into software. Ideally, we want conversations with other humans, and conversations with our code, to have the highest possible bandwidth. Every major problem in software development boils down to communication.
What if we enabled a dialog around the challenges, by first deconstructing the Anatomy of Communication itself using our same DDD techniques?
First, we'll start with a familiar system metaphor to give us the structure: a Network.
Imagine everyone on your team, and the software itself, are all connected by wires in a Network. Along each of these wires is a Flow of Ideas. Ideas can flow between humans, or between humans and the software. In the context of an Idea Flow Network, software is a medium for ideas.
From here, we can start to describe the dynamics of an Idea Flow Network in terms of Friction and Flow. We can invent new words, extend the models, and have dialogs about the nature of communication pain -- all with our newly invented Ubiquitous Language!
Let's combine our DDD skills with cognitive science research, to bring clarity and insight to this wordless space.
About the Author
Arty is a NFJS Tour Speaker, author of the book, Idea Flow, and creator of flowinsight.com, a next generation platform for optimizing programming flow.
Her development background is specialized in data-intensive analytic systems from financial core processors to factory automation, supply chain optimization and statistical process control (SPC). Her consulting work has focused on Continuous Delivery infrastructure, database automation, test automation strategies, and helping companies identify and solve their biggest problems with data.
After a 17-year career as a developer, consultant, and CTO, she is now an entrepreneur, founder of Twilight City, Inc, a new kind of game company on a mission... to bring back joy to our everyday work. She's also a PhD student at University of Victoria, pioneering research on how to make the friction we experience in software development visible, and get managers and engineers all pulling the same direction.