Thinking about thinking (again)
Whenever I need to think about how to structure a team, project or new product, I find myself returning to the brilliant Team Topologies book, which I have discussed on this blog before.
Today I rewatched the video in the post above while reviewing my notes on the book, as I wanted a refresher on the types of knowledge. While watching, i caught a reference to "Hacking your Head". A talk about cognitive load, which it turns out, is brilliant too! Watch for yourself:
The talk itself is only 10 minutes, so well worth your time.
It also re-introduced me to Millers Law, which I knew before - the 7 +/- 2 rule about working memory:
Contributors to Wikimedia projects
But I didn't know the law had other applications / parts to it, and I LOVE them too. So it actually has three parts:
- Working memory: "the number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven"
- Communication: "that in order to understand what someone is telling you, it is necessary for you to assume the person is being truthful, then imagine what could be true about it."
- Programming: "All discussions of incremental updates to Bugzilla will eventually trend towards proposals for large scale redesigns or feature additions or replacements for Bugzilla."
The last two were new to me, but they also ring very true.
