Sum of my parts are greater than others

[bcholmes]

The first time I heard the saying "The whole is greater than the sum of the parts", I didn't get it. I was a very mathematical kid, see. I probably thought about two and two and their sum, four. I sometimes have a dreadful tendency toward cluelessness. (As an aside, it took me one hell of a long time to understand the saying, "People who live in glass houses...")

I think my "Ah-ha" moment for that saying happened when one of my math teachers talked about how the "whole" has something that the "sum of the parts" doesn't have -- a relationship. Thing One has such-and-such a relationship with Thing Two.

But there's something about the way of seeing that I was coming from that I'm interested in talking about. I was looking at the world in a way that made the things obvious and the relationships invisible. So I couldn't grok the idea that the whole was greater than the sum of the parts. Is that just a consequence of living in a materialistic world?

I've been thinking about this in terms of eXtreme Programming. I was recently looking at a copy of Questioning Extreme Programming. I was rather annoyed that the author, by his own admission, hadn't even tried eXtreme Programming before he decided to write a book criticizing it.

And here's a claim that I keep hearing again and again: that the XP practices have been around since the Stone Age of software development. Here's one review from Amazon.ca:

Most programmers have used some form of XP over the years. Actually it dates back to times when there was no software development lifecycles. [...] For the most part however, I find that it causes a lot of extra re-work, delays getting the finished project implemented as the user wants it, and uses a lot of time re-building, re-testing, excessive version control, re-implementing, changes, changes, changes, and lots of scope creep and gold-plating. Not only that but when I was programming it was not beneficial to have another programmer or anyone breathing down my neck. I need complete focus and concentration for long periods of time. It seems that things like this always tend to run in circles. With the younger generations trying what the older generations tried and then realizing you cannot skip the up-front work.

Note what the reviewer says:

• XP is nothing new.
• Despite being around forever, it's too irritating.
• Pair programming is dumb.
• I'm not currently a programmer, so I possibly haven't tried XP
• XP is a "kid" thing. The kids hafta grow up.

Can you say 'patronizing'? I knew you could.

This whole "XP is nothing new" is the thing that I'm interested in. Usually, when I talk about XP, I end up saying, as most people say, "there are these twelve practices, see?"

But.

XP is greater than the sum of the twelve practices.

Sure, chances are most people have been on a project that has used a few of those practices. But the ah-ha moment of XP happens not because of the "things" but because of the relationships. The practices play off of one another and create (dare I say it?) synergies that aren't apparent when you itemize the practices.

How to describe this episteme? This way of seeing? "Thing-oriented"? And what kind of strategies can one use to break out of that way of seeing?

Comments

[purplesofa.livejournal.com]

Your need for thing/relationship integration reminds me of when I understood the value of naming the relationships in data models. This is a step in the move from physical database design towards conceptual information modelling.

It also reminds me of the (trite but true) explanations of polyamorous love multiplying, not dividing. 1+1 = 2, plus 1 relationship to maintain. 1+1+1 = 3, plus 4 relationships to maintain.