10 Chapter 12: Distanciation in Agile

This web page is associated with a book called called Hermeneutics in Agile Systems Development.

The book can be bought at: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Dr_Jerome_Heath_Hermeneutics_in_Agile_Systems_Deve?id=mi6VBQAAQBAJ

The book gives a more complete explanation of these issues and includes a number of related topic discussions. The combination develops the understanding of the concepts of Agile software development.

Distanciation is an agile method used to avoid the dogmatic interpretation associated with a structured analysis of a text or discourse, by interpreting the text within itself. That means viewing the statements in their own window separate from other interpretive contexts. The internal context is then the first context. This is important in agile as the individual discussions, texts (aural or written), screens, and code of the development process can have distinct contexts separate from the project as a whole and separate from previous documentation.

Paul Ricoeur’s concept of distanciation is a challenge to the structural school of language interpretation. The work prior to the post-modern approach was narrow and caught in a web of analysis work that was like a wet blanket. Besides that, the rise of the Nazi’s seemed to fit in too well with structural ideas. There had to be an escape from these problems without throwing the baby out with the bath water. In other words we wanted to save the critical work that had been done, but augment it somehow so it avoided some obvious difficulties.

Ricoeur’s distanciation has been misunderstood. Because of the name there was some confusion about its meaning. Textbook definitions of distanciation implied we ignored the context of a text and chose any context we pleased. In the critical school distanciation actually means ignoring all the contexts of the text and making up a context of your own. Another lecture on hegemony. The actuality of the Ricoeur’s method was to mediate the text through poetry instead of prose to see if this could reveal internal meaning that was more satisfying than the dogmatic structured interpretation. Ricoeur was interested in a deeper understanding of what text referred to. Viewing text through poetry allows the text to speak in a different voice which is an escape from the weight of previous interpretation methods.

In agile we are looking for any escape from pure structure. The user or customer may not understand what a program does or how it does it, but the user has goals in everything they say. They are speaking their non-scientific language and they know what they mean. Distanciation would mean, recognizing that the user is intelligent in spite of not knowing as much about the technical side of the development process. It means recognizing that the user has feelings for the system unrelated to the structural understanding. Their expressions are about the project from their language and perspective, which includes their feelings. By looking at the systems discourse as containing emotion as well as structure; you allow the customers to express their concerns in their own language and then interpret them as both quantitative and qualitative.

My Use of Distanciation in Agile

Distanciation in Agile is related to Just in Time. You need to hear the total story of the sub-system or system part so you understand with some depth the text, the code, the screens, or the data. Two shutters open at the same time. This is only perfected at the JIT point. It is just the right time for this particular sub-system. We are not trying to find a function or determine a structure. That would hide much of the meaning.

We know the overall system as layers in an archeological site. We can pivot between these two levels; between the sub-systems (or system parts) and the view of the whole system on this basis. Yourdon pivoted between coupling and cohesion to include the parts into the whole. This implies a structured (functional) system. Object oriented and other agile methodologies can do better than this. The interpreting of narratives about the parts of the system needs to consider these parts wholly and completely in them selves which probably is not cohesion. And coupling is less of a difficulty if the process is analyzed through archeological layering. Linkages between systems then take on a more natural character as layering is understood.

As a help in the total meaning of a sub-system, I do look at the understanding of sub-systems or parts as though each was a poem (in itself) in the sense that the first context is the internal context; as with poetry. This provides the depth of meaning needed. In the structured view the first context of a module is its relationship to other modules. Cohesion is enforced through low coupling. But you really do lose the meaning of the narrative when the internal context is not the important issue. This is especially true with object oriented “modules”. They have an internal sense or meaning that causes them to be a thing and not a function. That makes them useful (pragmatics).

We are looking, at this level of the development, to use any analytic method that emphasizes the total internal context; without ignoring the other (external) contexts. Defining the “text” as poetry is just a way of emphasizing both its first context and the depth of the first context that we need. We can then pivot to archeological layering to examine the relationship (discourse) between this part in the overall system. Using layering, this higher level discourse is mediated by similar artifacts which supports the clarity of the relationships.

Dr. Jerome Heath

See also: Journey.

See also: Agile Development.