Humility & Courage

Humility is not lack of confidence. Bravado is not courage.

I believe that Humility & Courage are essential traits for doing quality software work. The reality of software development teaches that. Refusal to learn this lesson is a root cause for poor software quality and dysfunctional teams.

Humility.
Humility means being aware that one could be wrong; that one's understanding has gaps. Humility leads us to always question our assumptions; to always put them to the test.

Defensive coding is humility. Assert statements check one's mental model of the state of execution of the code. It is accepting that one could be wrong.

Recognizing the primacy of unit tests that can be easily and frequently run, and provide appropriate coverage metrics, is humility. Adding tests that increase coverage metrics is humility.

Humility is a prerequisite for learning.

Courage.
Visually challenged persons are not be able to walk briskly. But they learn to progress by testing their way with the help of a cane. That is courage.

As software professionals we should realize that we are "visually challenged". Courage is "tapping" our way forward. The "tapping of the cane" are experiments that we must conduct to improve our understanding. These experiments have to be small steps.

Resolutely "tapping" our way to our objective is Courage.

Agile.
An Agile process is about Humility & Courage.