Although the original idea of this post was to reflect on the possibilities of graph theory to improve the organization of development teams, I changed my mind. Sorry.
Well, if many companies that have always criticized remote work now encourage it, fueled by panic at COVID 19, I think I can also change course in this simple post. So if you are interested in graph theory you may not want to continue reading…
While trying to match team members and tasks with vertices and edges of a graph, I remembered how my relationship with mathematics began.
I think it has happened to many, as a boy I hated mathematics (my world was a soccer ball and a bicycle) or as I would later discover, I could not understand mathematics and that was what made me hate them.
Sooner rather than later, in high school, understanding and managing math was more than a must. Since I was very young I had decided to study electronics and not understanding mathematics practically left me without possibilities.
Needless to say, the first 2 years were really complicated but I had managed to have a level of mediocrity enough to pass.
In my third year of high school things changed, not only because mathematics became more complex by incorporating trigonometry, logarithms, etc etc but mainly because of the teacher I had that year.
To make this story short, one of those teachers who give you a choice between the red and the green pill, knowing in advance which one you are going to choose.
I really couldn’t tell what the secret was, but basically it was about showing us the problems and giving us a framework where we could think and solve them. I remember that the solution to a mathematical problem only got a name and was theorized after understanding how to solve it. Pythagoras, Pi, Sine, Cosine, etc.
From that moment on, my vision of mathematics changed, I could even say that I became interested at least enough to achieve an acceptable mediocrity that allowed me to handle mathematical analysis and obtain my degree in electronics without problems.
Many years later, after several sabbatical years, without using mathematics and having changed my interests regarding what to study, when I studied Mathematics I in college while studying industrial design, I had another teacher with similar characteristics that refreshed the feeling of satisfaction in understanding or solving a mathematical problem.
Both teachers shared the criterion of guiding without imposing and despite having spent years teaching the same knowledge, they maintained their enthusiasm and interest in what they were teaching.
They also shared the gender, both were women and were advanced in age.
I could say that they taught me to think, or rather, to think orderly.
Taking advantage of the closeness with the international women’s day, on behalf of these two anonymous women for the vast majority, I want to highlight the role of women and older adults who are often left aside without considering their experience just because they are “ old”.
I think that when we talk about opportunities, the real opportunities are to have teachers with these characteristics.
Well, so that this post does not become a TED talk and serves at least as a consolation prize to those who were interested in the article and hoped to find something that would improve the way the software development teams work, I could say that companies, that have a long-term plan, should be aware of the importance of fostering a training culture that is related to natural learning so that the growth of their teams is not a bottleneck.
In any case, my thanks to Professors Gonzalez and Vera Martha Winitzky Spinadel for helping me to use my brain a little more.