Psychology and IT

There two fields are closer than one thinks. When studying Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, I had to cover many topics that fall under psychology. From how human memory works, to neural networks. From communication, to language learning and acquisition. However another area where it is of massive importance is at the workplace. it is of vital importance to remember that at the end of the day, we are working with human beings, who have dreams, feelings and agendas. Their language is ambiguous, and their APIs are inconsistent. Their IDE tends to be hard to use, and sometimes what they say is hard to compile ( or rather interpret ). Humans also do not have one generic protocol for communication, and their source code is unmaintainable.
Which is where the psychology kicks in. One needs to wear extra gentle gloves when dealing with humans, and also, one must not forget his or her own feelings and problems. Projects do not only fail because of lack of knowledge of the available technologies, or because of coding standards. Projects also fail because of human nature. Some people find it hard to get along, other absolutely cannot work together. Some people are hard to understand, while others suck at team work. Everyone has a personal character, and when working with such people, get to know their "documentation" and their "API calls", because ( and trust me on this) you'll need them later.
Recently I was trying to explain to friends of mine ( who do not work in IT) what a retrospective is. The reactions this got were mixed, and they ranged from people not believing it works, to people not believing it is needed.
From my personal experience, I find these little exercises to work. it is good for a team, as a whole, and as a new temporary family, to try these exercises together, because after all, improving the team structure and internal working, will improve how the team works as a whole.
It is good to know what other people did.
it is good for other people to know what you did.
It is good for every team member to feel appreciated.
It is good to see that past failures are being worked on.
It is good to get your voice heard.
It is good to take a short time off, and reflect.
It is good to learn from past mistakes, otherwise they are lost.
It is good to laugh together, as a team.


And finally, it is always to look back, before looking forward. This is why the Roman god Janus has two faces, facing different directions.