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Enough About Process, What We Need Are Heroes

Bach, J. (1995). Enough about process: what we need are heroes. IEEE Software, 12(2), 96–98. https://doi.org/10.1109/52.368273

This is one of the seminal works of my youth. It's a short article that attacks the dehumanizing use of the word "process" and counters with a human-centered view of technical work. A hero, charitably and usefully defined for the technical world, is anyone who takes initiative to solve an ambiguous problem. Good problem solving is heroic in the sense that the solution to ambiguous problems is never a foregone conclusion, and solving them cannot be compelled-- it must be a choice. This maps directly to the hero's journey as describe in Joseph Campbell's book The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

This article expresses the direction my career has taken ever since. For richer or poorer!

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