[Themaintainers] How to Build for the Handoff

Sat Aug 5 10:27:13 EDT 2017

Following Lee's point about accidents and deaths in shift changes in heavy
industry and energy, I recently learned that in neural critical care the
docs often work 24/7 for a week at a time. The rationale -- I don't have an
opinion as to the merits of this argument -- is that the risk from fatigue
is less than the risk that arises from handoffs. Unlike heavy industry and
energy, which involve continuous processes, neural critical care involves
patients experiencing a crisis of relatively short duration so that on a
one week shift the doc may -- when timing works out -- be able to follow a
patient during the entire crisis. Because this involves crises, perhaps
this isn't a matter for "maintainers."

This schedule is not without critics, of course -- for instance, see No
Doctor Should Work 30 Straight Hours Without Sleep
<https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/no-doctor-should-work-30-straight-hours/510395/>
.

Stuart M. Whitaker <stu at whitaker.com>
Financial Economics | Operations | Analysis and Planning

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On Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 10:24 PM, Camille E. Acey <connect at camilleacey.com>
wrote:

> Actually a great many of us underrepresented people (women/ of color/
> queer) in tech talk about empathy and software product development quite a
> lot.  In fact every episode of the Greater Than Code podcast touches on it
> https://www.greaterthancode.com/podcast/
>
> Camille E. Acey
>
> "Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and
> that is an act of political warfare." - Audre Lorde
>
> -------- Original message --------
> From: Mason Scholl <strax22 at gmail.com>
> Date: 8/4/17 12:21 (GMT-05:00)
> To: Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com>
> Cc: Themaintainers <themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Themaintainers] How to Build for the Handoff
>
> In a similar vein, the Embedded podcast recently had an interview
> with Chris Svec (@christophersvec) about empathy driven software
> development.
>
> http://embedded.fm/episodes/78
>
> He gave a talk at the 2015 Embedded Systems Conference on the subject. You
> can find the slides here: http://chrissvec.com/empathy-driven-development-
> slides/ .
>
> It's an interesting subject that most developers don't often think about.
>
> On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 12:50 PM, Lee Vinsel <lee.vinsel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Yes, thanks, Camille.
>>
>> Andy and I gave a talk at a conference of maintenance professionals,
>> Mainstream <http://www.mainstreamconf.com/>, a few months ago. I learned
>> from one attendee that handoffs are an extremely difficult and fraught
>> issue within technical organizations. In heavy industry and the energy
>> sector, accidents and deaths, including around maintenance, often happen
>> around shift changes. Companies are working hard to improve the
>> process—often by using computerized management systems that standardize the
>> information that is handed from one shift to another—but difficulties
>> remain.
>>
>> Lee
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 12:54 PM, Andrew Russell <arussell at arussell.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Camille - yes, relevant and fascinating.
>>>
>>> Apart from the merits of this approach as a good business practice, and
>>> sound/sane technical practice, the word that came to mind as I was reading
>>> was *courteous*.  How cool would it be if "courtesy" became a
>>> coding/business buzzword? (One can dream, right?)
>>>
>>> Andy
>>>
>>> On Jul 27, 2017, at 11:47 AM, Camille E. Acey <connect at camilleacey.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> *"Write and review code for maintainability, readability and
>>> extensibility (versus terseness or cleverness). Code that engineers can’t
>>> understand is code that engineers can’t build on, and it’s code engineers
>>> will want to throw out and rewrite. When we’re writing code to hand off, we
>>> stay wary of anything that is so clever it is opaque, where function and
>>> variable names aren’t readable, expressive, and clear, where the code
>>> structure makes it difficult to find what you need. Documentation should
>>> accompany most changes, and standard code style should be enforced
>>> throughout. "*
>>>
>>> https://trackchanges.postlight.com/how-to-build-for-the-hand
>>> off-a2af3421be11
>>>
>>> I thought this was a relevant read!
>>> --
>>> Camille E. Acey
>>> http://camilleacey.com
>>>
>>> *"Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and
>>> that is an act of political warfare." - *Audre Lorde
>>>
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>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Starting Fall 2017—Assistant Professor
>> Department of Science and Technology in Society
>> Virginia Tech
>> leevinsel.com
>> Twitter: @STS_News
>>
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>
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