From ACockburn@aol.comThu Aug  1 14:22:58 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 13:15:55 -0400
From: ACockburn@aol.com
To: plop@p300.cpl.uiuc.edu
Subject: Alistair's paper, Word version and abstract

Here is the abstract in Ascii, attached is the Word binary.

Thanks,  Alistair

--abstract follows--

     It is difficult to identify and locate the pattern that you need.  This
paper presents a locating scheme based on sensations and symptoms that cause
you to look for a pattern.  It is tried with project management patterns
because they carry symptoms and sensations suited to the medical metaphor.
 The reader is invited to consider whether this locating scheme works for
other patterns.
     Even just with the Design Patterns book, people comment they dont know
how to find the pattern they should be reading.  With the increasing number
of patterns available, that task is getting harder. At an informal gathering,
Martin Fowler described the medical system of the British National Health
Service, and it seemed remarkable how similar the medical problem is to the
patterns problem.  A doctor needs to diagnose a situation, run a procedure to
check the diagnosis, and then make a recommendation. The problem facing
doctors, as pattern readers, is the large number of possible diagnoses, and
the need to find the right one.  The decision of what to use depends on
sensations and symptoms (a sensation is what the patient is feeling, a
symptom is what the doctor detects).
     A catalog of project management risk-reduction patterns is a good place
to apply the medical metaphor, since the situation implies there is already a
sense of discomfort.  The catalog would be several hundred pages long.  How
would a person find the right pattern to apply? I propose: by issue, by
sensation and by symptoms.  The catalog contents are first divided into
chapters by primary issue: productivity, communication, distractions,
efficiency, quality, etc.  A diagnosis table of sensations and symptoms helps
the reader find proximate and crossover patterns.  This paper shows the
diagnosis table and five representative patterns. More patterns are listed in
the table than there is space for in the paper. 

--end of abstract--