“Projects Are Conversations”
Here’s a great interview with David Schmaltz (free registration required) by Tobias Fors. A couple of highlights:
Predicting is essentially surveying without benefit of territory. It has more to do with how we characterize the unknowable than how well we know the unknowable. It is imagining, “projecting.” [...] What seemed reasonable in the context of surveying without benefit of the territory can seem absurd in the presence of the territory.
And:
In The Blind Men [Amazon], I argue for sitting with the apparent disorganized mess for a while before imposing order upon it. I make this suggestion because sitting with the mess is where we learn about others and about the context. If we impose a tidy orderliness upon ourselves first, before we understand our surroundings, we are unlikely to be well adapted to the variety surrounding us.
(Also posted at my company’s weblog.)