Continuous improvement is based on balancing what we desire with the practicalities of time and effort. Continuous improvement gives us control of our changes and our situation, guided by feedback and reflection. But change is not always ours to control and, if we are honest, some changes are better carried out discretely than discreetly. Change from outside can arrive gradually and then all at once. It can be a surprise because we could not have known, or it can be a surprise because we chose not to know. Most changes described as disruptive were there all along and, in truth, are only disruptive because of attitude and entrenchment. But whether the change forced upon is sudden and catastrophic because it is sudden and catastrophic or simply because we didn't know better, we may find that evolution is forced upon us. How can we respond? Kevlin is an independent consultant, speaker, writer and trainer. His development interests are in patterns, programming, practice and process. He has been a columnist for a number of magazines and sites and has been on far too many committees (it has been said that "a committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled"). He is co-author of A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing and On Patterns and Pattern Languages, two volumes in the Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture series. He is also editor of 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know and 97 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know. He lives in Bristol and online.
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