Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Synthesis - The little known and used tool
Today, I came home a little early after a very nice team outing, and was thrilled to see my engineering classmate. We have recollected our good old engineering days, whereabouts of our classmates etc etc. It was nice to know that most of the chaps are doing well and many have preferred Software industry or rather IT as it is called here. And we talked about how many are working as developers, business analysts, release engineers etc. [Btw, programmers, designers, architects all belong to the developer category, my way of grouping ;-)]. The next topic was how many turned out to be good developers (Salary wasn't considered as an yard stick)
One of the things that spurred interest is a subjective equation, in the context of development or assessing a developer, which my friend read in some book; simple but elusive
Good = Acumen * Dexterity
Acumen is the gamut of technologies the person is aware of and dexterity is the extent of deftness exhibited in applying the known/learnt stuff. Acumen can be enhanced through trainings, reading books, learning from colleagues/peers, on the other hand dexterity is something that does not get enhanced through traditional learning approaches. Dexterity cannot be taught and has to be learnt by the individual. The next question would be how to gauge the dexterity.
A simple analogy - any (genuine) mechanical engineer would have studied the subject "Design of Machine Elements". For designing a simple nut and bolt, the right metal has to be choosen, the thread length on the nut has to be calculated, the dimensions have to fixed and the list goes on. To arrive at an "optimal" design, one needs to consider the metallurgical aspects, the shear force and bending moment, production engineering aspects etc. This process of considering all the factors affecting a system is called Synthesis. Essentially, Synthesis is nothing more than looking at all possible angles of the problem and bringing in the knowledge from the related fields and making best use of it.
When designing something, people do some Analysis. Analysis would help in breaking up the problem into small and manageable chunks. This is essential. At the same time, applying Synthesis would add more flexibility, extensibility, and maintainability to the piece being designed. While interviewing candidates, select a person with high synthesis quotient.
Oh boy! I have jotted much stuff. If you feel that this entry is disorganized, put your comments, I'll correct it.
One of the things that spurred interest is a subjective equation, in the context of development or assessing a developer, which my friend read in some book; simple but elusive
Good = Acumen * Dexterity
Acumen is the gamut of technologies the person is aware of and dexterity is the extent of deftness exhibited in applying the known/learnt stuff. Acumen can be enhanced through trainings, reading books, learning from colleagues/peers, on the other hand dexterity is something that does not get enhanced through traditional learning approaches. Dexterity cannot be taught and has to be learnt by the individual. The next question would be how to gauge the dexterity.
A simple analogy - any (genuine) mechanical engineer would have studied the subject "Design of Machine Elements". For designing a simple nut and bolt, the right metal has to be choosen, the thread length on the nut has to be calculated, the dimensions have to fixed and the list goes on. To arrive at an "optimal" design, one needs to consider the metallurgical aspects, the shear force and bending moment, production engineering aspects etc. This process of considering all the factors affecting a system is called Synthesis. Essentially, Synthesis is nothing more than looking at all possible angles of the problem and bringing in the knowledge from the related fields and making best use of it.
When designing something, people do some Analysis. Analysis would help in breaking up the problem into small and manageable chunks. This is essential. At the same time, applying Synthesis would add more flexibility, extensibility, and maintainability to the piece being designed. While interviewing candidates, select a person with high synthesis quotient.
Oh boy! I have jotted much stuff. If you feel that this entry is disorganized, put your comments, I'll correct it.
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