Physical vs. Invisible Material [LC18]

I'm still making sense of January's brewing break. I mentioned in the last update that major operations for each day are pre-planned: for every day of the season, well before the brewing year begins. Each kilogram of rice, out of tens of thousands, is accounted for in the brewing schedule.

The brewing year at Miyoshino Jozo is about seven months, from October through April. All the different batches of sake cascade down through, taking around three months. They flow in parallel, offset, each at a different place in the larger, well-charted process.

What is brewed — what can be physically produced — is constrained by rice in stock, tank space, fermentation schedule, staff capability, tools, and machinery. A spreadsheet on the walls lays out daily operations. Only one month is printed at a time, but the master sheet is a plan for the entire year. It's also a skeleton for next year's plan.

To use terms of the software world — while he delivers this year's roadmap, Hashimoto-san is already tuning next year's strategic plan through ongoing situational awareness. He's assessing the quality of rice from his farmers and the capability and skill of his staff. He's measuring and analyzing the progress of every batch, adjusting as necessary to ensure quality outcomes. He's looking at the market to see where there is demand and what's working well. He's investing in core products while reserving time to experiment with new techniques and directions: to innovate and decide if and how those experiments move into next year.

The inputs are clear: rice, water, and koji-kin. Materials are transformed into pressed and bottled sake through a well-charted series of decisions.

At each moment, the work-in-progress is physically present and inspectable. The output must perform in the market to be an outcome, but its qualities and deficiencies can be understood while the work is underway — well before the product is out the door.

Contrast that with the world of software work. What are our inputs and outputs? What is the material we transform? (Allow your craft sensibility to reject "venture capital" as the answer.) How well do we understand the quality or deficiencies of our work-in-progress while it's underway?

I see our work, less inspectable and well-ordered than brewing, as a gradient transformation. From ideas and insight to digital and social infrastructure. To inspect our work-in-progress is a different act at different stages in the process; at one end the fidelity and coherence of our shared intent, the quality and reliability of activities enabled by the systems we produce at the other.

We use a range of intermediate artifacts and heuristics along the way. We often mistake the method or the model for the material itself. Imagine if we could see, smell, taste, and touch the software as it's being fermented from our ideas. How well-charted would our processes be? What new clarity would we encounter in making decisions?

Until next time—

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