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Monday, March 30, 2009

Change

I have read quite a few blogs of people mentioning this word.  I am not going to provide a definitive answer and neither am I trying to “change” your viewpoint of what “change” is….I used the word “change” three times already without even analysing exactly of its definition.

What is change?

As per Google:
Definitions of change on the Web:

  • cause to change; make different; cause a transformation; "The advent of the automobile may have altered the growth pattern of the city"; "The discussion has changed my thinking about the issue"
  • an event that occurs when something passes from one state or phase to another; "the change was intended to increase sales"; "this storm is ...
  • undergo a change; become different in essence; losing one's or its original nature; "She changed completely as she grew older"; "The weather changed last night"
  • a relational difference between states; especially between states before and after some event; "he attributed the change to their marriage"
  • become different in some particular way, without permanently losing one's or its former characteristics or essence; "her mood changes in accordance with the weather"; "The supermarket's selection of vegetables varies according to the season"
  • the action of changing something; "the change of government had no impact on the economy"; "his change on abortion cost him the election"
  • switch: lay aside, abandon, or leave for another; "switch to a different brand of beer"; "She switched psychiatrists"; "The car changed lanes"
  • the result of alteration or modification; "there were marked changes in the lining of the lungs"; "there had been no change in the mountains"
  • change clothes; put on different clothes; "Change before you go to the opera"
  • the balance of money received when the amount you tender is greater than the amount due; "I paid with a twenty and pocketed the change"
  • exchange or replace with another, usually of the same kind or category; "Could you convert my dollars into pounds?"; "He changed his name"; "convert centimeters into inches"; "convert holdings into shares"
  • a thing that is different; "he inspected several changes before selecting one"
  • exchange: give to, and receive from, one another; "Would you change places with me?"; "We have been exchanging letters for a year"
  • a different or fresh set of clothes; "she brought a change in her overnight bag"
  • transfer: change from one vehicle or transportation line to another; "She changed in Chicago on her way to the East coast"
    wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Rather complicated isn’t it…

How do I see change
Change is a mindset.  An inevitability which occurs sometimes even without you knowing.  You often change your mind, clothes, time changes, the weather changes, etc… Can you change something without actually changing it, absolutely! Well, that’s at least what I am getting at.  A change can be made simply by how you think about things.  You are changing your thinking and according to me that’s the most important kind of change and not to mention the most powerful change of all.  I do agree as humans we cannot change things which are out of our control…weather is a good example of that although if you can change a mind (your own or some else's) it is an amazing feat in a league of its own.  The greatest leaders in history, sporting legends, coaches, teachers are those who convince their disciples/students to change their way of thinking.  In effect changing their mind.  We are affecting free will, well not directly but nonetheless we are.

You must be thinking…blah blah blah, I know all of this which is true…everyone probably knows the above although this is not what the blog is about.  I am trying to determine and hopefully change (there the word CHANGE) the way you see “change”.

When you get faced with a change, how do you generally react?  I go through a range of feelings generally:

  • nervous
  • excited
  • anxious
  • scared
  • confidence

Now the above will definitely depend on whether the change was voluntary or involuntary and also how big a change is.  When you go through this emotions do you often take into consideration the implications of your change?  How often do you go through a “what-if” analysis trying out different paths of your decision making.  How often do you document or remember of what the reasoning behind your change was?  In all honesty I don’t think any person would go through this kind of analysis for a small to medium size changed…forget that…most people wouldn’t even do those kind of analysis for making bigger life changes (i.e. moving countries, changing jobs, marriage, etc).  Lets face it, we have big expectations from our brains, we attempt to remember the reasons for the change, completely possible to do…although how long will you remember this reasoning?

This forced me to think, can we make the process of change more reliable by remembering why and when we made a change.  Will this help us make better changes in the future?  This is a more generic solution, what I am currently in the process of doing is looking at this from a software developers perspective.

A software developer perspective…
Many a times have I done some work and come back to it and had trouble remember why and when the change was made.  If you work for a company surely they’ll have some sort of mechanism to document exactly this although more often than you think it will fall short of your personal expectations.  Maybe you are compulsive organiser like how I am and start writing endless pages of notes of why a change was required, where it was required, what other modules will the change effect, the tests you did to choose the optimum implementation of the change, etc etc.  Finally this will become hard to manage simply due to so much manual writing, sorting and especially searching back through pages of written work.  Isn’t there a better solution?

Surely there are better solutions out there…which you may have to pay for or other solutions which maybe completely generic and do not cater for your particular flavour of change management.  I really want something which I can use, modify and persist over years.  Something like a blog…but only for your coding changes.  This is when it came to me, I really want a visual DSL which can cater for my obtuse needs as they arise.  I can also use this wherever I go irrespective of the change I am making.

This system could not only help you document what change you made but also help you in determining how successful your change was 1-2 years down the line.  Did you make a change to fix your change, how did your change scale for the future, did you change too much so that you simply ended up writing a whole new feature (which defeats the purpose of change nonetheless it is still technically a change).

I will be documenting on how I went about designing such a DSL in later Blogs.  Hopefully it will give me a better understanding on how to manage change outside the IT sector and apply it to more generic changes…such as company decisions and risk analysis.

Keep an eye out…

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