Using War Stories

For the education of software architects we are using war stories to emphasize important learnings. The whole curriculum is based on the mantra of learning from failure. Errare humanum est! Thus, it is important to see what can go wrong and how to deal with it in a better way. Everyone of us architects knows a whole bunch of war stories from the own career. I also caused failures, but learned from them. It is basically the same like children when they learn to walk. They'll fail but keep on trying until they eventually succeed. It is not a shame to think about own failures. Some cultures force people to always appear perfect which is a bad fundament. As we all encounter failure, it is better to learn what exactly went wrong and why instead of just hiding it from others and ourselves. When we educate architects we do not just teach them theory but also and even more practice. As Einstein once said, "in theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice they aren't."