Memories

My family was playing Charades For Kids the other day and my 4-year old did a charade of a computer. She knelt on the floor, folded her arms, and sat really quietly (she's not known to sit quietly). As I thought about how cute and funny it was, I'd wished that I'd taken a picture of it (or, even better, a video).

That got me thinking. Why do we take pictures, videos, write journals, etc. in our daily life? That's obvious. We want to hold onto the memories, to refresh them, to share them, etc. That's especially important to me because I have a terrible memory (fortunately, my wife is very forgiving).

But, why don't we do that on our software projects? Sure, we may have a company picnic and take pictures, but that's not what I'm talking about. Why don't we keep a project journal, take a "snapshot" of the brilliant insight that a co-worker had on a particularly tough technical issue, or record our team meetings where we made all of those important decisions? Sometimes, we do. Most of the time, we don't. We rely upon our memories, upon the memories of our co-workers, and in many cases, the *short* memory of our clients and customers.

The more I think about it, the more I think that there's not enough information about our projects stored somewhere that's long-term. It's hard to learn from your mistakes when you forget them so quickly (in fact, I tend to claim that I don't make mistakes; since I don't remember them, they didn't happen, right?). It's not that we don't have the tools (email server backups, wiki pages, blogs, shared storage, etc.). I'm not sure if it's a cultural thing (for geeks) or that no one shares my opinion that it's important. Maybe we never justify the time to write it down? If so, that's too bad, as I expect we lose a lot of time looking for information that was lost or forgotten. If I remembered everything that I ever did and learned, I'd almost be a half-way smart guy. Unfortunately, I didn't write it down, so I remain pretty dumb. Just forgive me if I have to ask your name a few times...