This reminds me of a story I've read some time ago, about some monkeys and bananas.
A group of monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top.
Every time a monkey tries to reach the bananas it is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. Eventually, the monkeys learn that something bad will happen if they climb up the pole so they just sit and don’t even try again.
If a new monkey is added to replace an old monkey, it will of course try to go for the bananas. But the original monkeys will grab and drag it down before the punishment is even triggered. After a while, the monkey gets the message and it stops trying.
Repeat the action of adding a new monkey in place of an old one enough times and you will reach a point where none of the monkeys know why they shouldn't get the bananas but they still won't try.
The story concludes by stating that even if we remove the shower at this point it won't really make a difference. The learned behavior is already deeply ingrained in the culture of the group.
Funny enough, I've seen this type of issue in many human teams/projects. And usually the inertia is far too strong for just a couple of engineering "monkeys" to radically change things if they don't get support from a few management "monkeys".
yep, that's why I called it a story, not a scientific experiment. It could even be read as a kind of anecdote of parable.
While oversimplified, it can serve as a good example on how an initially rational practice could easily became dogma even when the initial stimulus is no longer present.
Part of my day job in the past 2 years has been to consult a client in refactoring/rewriting an old platform. The client's old team is still in place and even if we've added some new people just to try and change the mindset, the inertia of the spaghetti codebase coupled with the client's short and mid term financial goals as well as the "traditions" of the old team has stopped us from enacting any groundbreaking changes.
I guess the moral is that there are many forces at play in this kind of setup and stories like these can help in framing some of them in a fun way.
A group of monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top.
Every time a monkey tries to reach the bananas it is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. Eventually, the monkeys learn that something bad will happen if they climb up the pole so they just sit and don’t even try again.
If a new monkey is added to replace an old monkey, it will of course try to go for the bananas. But the original monkeys will grab and drag it down before the punishment is even triggered. After a while, the monkey gets the message and it stops trying.
Repeat the action of adding a new monkey in place of an old one enough times and you will reach a point where none of the monkeys know why they shouldn't get the bananas but they still won't try.
The story concludes by stating that even if we remove the shower at this point it won't really make a difference. The learned behavior is already deeply ingrained in the culture of the group.
Funny enough, I've seen this type of issue in many human teams/projects. And usually the inertia is far too strong for just a couple of engineering "monkeys" to radically change things if they don't get support from a few management "monkeys".