Philosophy of Software Engineering

Human brain is a fascinating machine that has its own working patterns. By understanding these patterns, and work in a way that is compatible with these patterns, we can make make communication easier. Today I would like to talk about something I learned from Meaningful Learning, and how do we can use it to guide our work communication.

Meaningful Learning

Meaningful Learning is a well received education methodology brought by David Ausubel. It is a holistic approach that covers many aspects of the learning activity. The basis of Meaningful Learning(crudely summarized by my understanding) is:

• Knowledge is stored in the shape of a network in human brain. The activity of learning is to incorporate new information into existing knowledge network.
• Concepts are the basic elements of the network. Concepts form statements through the relationships between them. Statements forms theories through categorization.
• Being able to utilize the knowledge to analyze/solve problems is a sign that the learner have incorporated new knowledge into their knowledge network.

From this theory, Ausubel detailed different ways to help with this integration process, including preexisting knowledge, stable concept, advance organizers, and applying the knowledge.

How do we apply the knowledge in a business context

Most of the communications in a business context are information propaganda. Adopting educational theories in communications can help the audience accept new information faster and clearer. Let’s see what can we infer from meaningful learning.

Prior Knowledge

Ausubel has a quote: “The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows. Ascertain this and teach him accordingly.” A new concept must make connections to known concepts for a learner to absorb. Therefore, when introducing a new concept, we should double check the audience’s preexisting concept, and start from there. Layman’s term and Explain like I’m 5 both adheres to this concept, they assume no preexisting knowledge and build new concepts from everyday language. This way of communication will be more effective at conveying information than using jargons unfamiliar to the audience.

Stable concept

Scheme Theory in cognitive science explains how human brain organizes information. To put it simply, concepts are defined by their relationship with other concepts. Therefore, a concept is only as accurate as the concepts it anchors on. The effectiveness of a concept relies on itself being accurate and ubiquitous – the more accurate it is, the more confidently you can put it into use, and the more information it reveals to you. For example: many people outside of software engineering know about agile methodology. They may understand it in this way: “it’s a software engineering practise”, “it’s good”. But a lot of them might not know what does “software engineering practise” means, and they might confuse agile with Agile frameworks like Scrum or SAFe, or org chart like Spotify model or 2-pizza teams. Others might not know what “good” means in the context of software engineering, and they might misunderstood the focus of agile for increase resource utilization, or increase individual performance. What this tells us is when we’re communicating with others, pay close attention to the signs where the audiences’ pre-existing concepts are vague, as it will damage the understanding of the new concepts. When we are in the audience, we should seek to clarify the unclear concepts until there is no ambiguity in the context. Often, paraphrasing is a good approach to expose the misunderstanding.

Advance organizers

Advance organizers are ways to present learning material so that it helps with the learning process. There are multiple identified advance organizers. Here are the ones I find applicable in business organization, some of them are already well established best practises.

Expository Advance Organizers

“Expository advance organizers give students a broad idea of the lesson’s purpose before the lesson begins.” This is backed by Schema Theory, which points out human brain organize information by categorizing them, similar to how we organize files into folders and cabinets. By giving out a clear learning goal(e.g. what problem does this skill/knowledge helps solving) the audience can organize the new information more easily. An example is to always send an agenda with meeting invite – it helps people remember the discussion of the session. Another example is when coaching junior devs, tell them when to use the technique you showcase. By putting the question and the solution together, the audience will have a better chance of recalling the solution when they meet the question again.

Narrative Advance Organizers

Anecdotes. They forms connections between everyday scenario and the new knowledge. They are also captivating(well the good ones are), demanding audience’s focus for a better retention. A brilliant example is the book Implementing Lean Software Development. It’s full of anecdotes with the principles next to them offering explanation and a holistic view. As I nodding to the stories I also memorized the moral of the stories subconsciously.

Analogues

Analogue is another way to connect abstract concepts to something the audience is familiar with.

Graphic Advance Organizers

Graphic Advanced Organizers use visual material to reveal the relationship between different concepts. In a business organization, people use all kinds of diagrams. I just want to add one more to your arsenal: concept map. Concept map is used to communicate a network of concept and their relationships. I find it the most useful as a tool to clarify concepts(both to yourself and with a group), prepare communication material(presentation, article etc), and introducing a new domain(onboarding and cross function collab). I also suggest you keep a list of diagrams you find useful, and get used to drawing them.

Conclusion

To improve your communication skill, consider adopting the Meaningful Learning methods:

• Find out the audience’s prior knowledge and start from there,
• Make sure concepts are concise and ubiquitous among audience.
• State the reason this new information is relavent to the audience.
• Use anecdotes, analogues and diagrams to make your content easy to digest.

By utilizing these approaches, we would shape our communication more aligned with the way our brain acquire new information, and will generally achieve better outcome.