James Bach is running a rapid software class over the web, and I am enjoying it. (You can take the course for $250 per session; read about it - here).
He also has forums set up for people who are taking the class.
Here's my latest post to those forums:
Michael Bolton Wrote:
Intuition, to me, means "some cognitive process that I can't articulate (mostly because I haven't tried, or I haven't really thought too hard about it)."
I dunno about that. I might agree with "often" instead of mostly.
A few years back, I heard a speech by Dr. James Dobson, where he claimed that in females, the connections between left-and-right brains are closer, and more active in communicating. That means, for example, that they might connect a nod of the head or look in the eyes with an intent that men don't pick up on.
Several times since then, when my wife says "I don't trust that guy ..." about someone I might work with, I listen to her. And she is allways right.
We call it women's intuition, and I think that, physiologically, there is something to it.
I think it's similar with men. With testers, it's often more like Deja Vu - we notice that the software is doing something weird, but can't articulate why, and it's actually our subconscious that still remembers the SUPERMAN game we used to play on the Atari 2600, where you could win the game just by walking to the left at the beginning instead of going right - which was the action sequence that 'started' the game.
But we don't REMEMBER Superman.
So, I've learned to trust my gut. I would add that I think there is benefit to be gained from asking your gut "ok, why do you think that's true?" and active introspection. We might not always get answer, but it's usually helpful ...
So, I guess I'm saying I agree with you, if in a more mild extent .
2 comments:
For many years before developing Scrum I worked with a non-profit that was run by women and often in groups where I was the only man. I realized that women working intensively together exist in a collective mind space that men rarely participate in. This is why they often answer each others unspoken questions with half sentences that are unintelligible to men.
One day in a meeting I popped into their collective mind space and realized what was happening with their nonverbal communication. Another man joined the group for a while and he was an independent entity disconnected from the mind space. It was funny because I could see from the women's viewpoint that he was totally clueless as to what was going on.
This female intuition may just be sensitivity to subtle clues and innuendoes that women learn by experience combined with genetics. It felt to me that it was more than that.
OMG, I use to hit the pause button at the beginning of the Superman game with Supes positioned in the middle of the screen and when (in paused mode) it showed the screen with villians escaping I would move supes right at Lex Luther (in his dumb helicopter get up)and Lex would be right back in jail.Game Over. I loved that game.
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