Thread by @refactorfiend

overlooked but obvious signs that your dev team might be struggling with implicit differences in povs with another team (implicit model context diffs)?

- coded interfaces don't match up
- unexpected functionality/bugs pop up
- confusing unproductive discussions and meetings

when you un/intentionally try to intersect two sets of povs/concepts that are subtly different from each other, you get:

- duplicate concepts
- false cognates

duplicate concepts - i.e. two classes in two different places, that represent the same concept; you get all the problems of WET code; have to worry about making changes in two places; and having to keep em in sync; but because the diff; non DRY

false cognates - conflation; ppl use the same term, unaware that they mean diff things; e.g. e'ybody has a diff meaning for "coding for passion" but use the same word; leads to data contradictions, stepping on toes, confusing unproductive discussions, meetings, and collaboration

problems arise when you don't take the nuances seriously when your team's say things like - "it's just a name, right?" or "same difference"; when a dev, sme, team, or org chooses stay unaware of or overlook context

what makes the problem worse is that some orgs culturally are resistant to the mindset and work processes that facilitate refactoring and continuous improvement

so although realizing the subtle differences, and the need to refactor, is a great thing and an opportunity to improve system design, ironically it's sometimes seen as a headache

but when you make the nuances in language/concepts known, your teams can make conscious refactorings to either combine; or to separate; and in turn avoid the false cognate, concept duplication hazards among/between dev teams

#ddDesign #ooDesign #softwareDesign