Why Are Griots So Important In Many African Societies? Several research works suggest non-textual alternatives to textual documentation and similar kinds of representing information in software program improvement. This is because of the problems that stem from writing those files, which variety from incomprehensible requirements to ambiguous user stories.
The numerous proposals of researchers regularly include some trace of oral or visible conversation. In this paper, we study the implications of doing away with textual verbal exchange and substituting useless writing by using extracting the values of West African oral storytellers. Traditional West African groups did not employ writing for hundreds of years and yet their legends, customs, ideals, and expertise had been efficiently transmitted throughout several generations.
How did they manage to accomplish this? What can we analyze from their storytellers? How can those lessons be implemented to software program products? These are all questions that this paper attempts to answer. Perhaps if we fully recognize how they operated, then we can target our written communication to the sports wherein it's far wanted in preference to spreading writing throughout lots of responsibilities as it is presently.
To attain this, we accomplished an evaluation of the two domain names: West African oral storytelling and software program improvement and determined similarities, then selected a few key elements from oral storytelling and defined how they could have relevance in software development.
The topic without delay encompasses diversity and inclusion by using bringing into software program engineering a attitude of a vicinity wherein its literacy studies is scarcely being explored. Why Are Griots So Important In Many African Societies?
The have a look at found that traditional oral storytelling can provide insights into powerful communique and target market engagement, and recognized 4 approaches wherein software program development may be as compared to oral storytelling. The have a look at also observed that certain factors of storytelling, together with audience courting, story shape, parables and proverbs, and community relaxation and support, can be applied to writing duties in software program improvement.
1. Introduction
We can not list the endless scientific and technical papers emphasizing the significance of a nicely written software documentation. There are several reasons why it is a superb idea to jot down a software specification report: it's miles a settlement a few of the stakeholders, it is a guideline for the developers, a reference for the testers, etc.
Still, after almost a century of software program improvement, most software understanding continues to be surpassed through oral transmission. Here, we aren't referring to the overall imaginative and prescient of software structures, that are properly-defined with the “authentic” technical documentation; as an alternative we concentrate our attempt at the crew conferences conducted for overview, reflection, discussion, and remarks.
During the early days of software development, software program analysis and layout have been primarily looked as if it would be a in basic terms technical technique. Nowadays, researchers and builders comprehend that the process of building some software program offers a robust affinity to conversations (Chilana et al., 2016) and/or writing tales (Lloyd, 2000).
Taking this interpretation of software program improvement into attention, along the initiative arose to dive into the records of West African storytellers and try to research a element or from them. Why West African storytellers? This place stands proud due to the fact its population had a late begin in writing (Kelly, 2019).
This makes us surprise approximately how they were able to maintain their stories and bypass them down from generation to technology without writing for this type of long time. It is the equal element we are seeking to gain in software improvement at some point of the life cycle of the software program task.
As well as through the turnover of developers and personnel who oversee the mission, and we want which will maintain and transfer the essence of the statistics using writing handiest whilst important. This caused the research question “What factors may be adopted from West African oral storytelling to alternative the useless writing part of software program improvement?.
This paper explores the oral-centric method of telling tales utilized by West Africans griots and maps out a contrast with contemporary software development methods.
Furthermore, it highlights the factors of the storytellers that appearance promising and in the end proposes a new approach on how the oral storytelling methods of West Africans can enhance the techniques software program developers use. This carries diversity and inclusion into software program engineering discipline through drawing concept from and exploring a place where studies of its literature has not been explored extensive.
The paper has the following shape: Section 2 offers the background of our work and discusses a comparison of storytelling and software program improvement; Section 3 affords the motivations of our research and describes our method; Section 4 outlines our consequences; Section five discusses the restrictions of this paintings; in the end, Section 6 attracts our conclusions and describes our plans to keep this studies.
2. Background
To start off with, what's oral storytelling? Oral storytelling is absolutely the artwork of telling a tale verbally to an target audience. It may be inside the shape of singing, chanting, dancing, or even poems.
For centuries, the records, ideals, and folklore of West African communities were preserved via the lifestyle of making a song and storytelling. A key function of oral storytelling is that there's an target market and that the interaction between the storyteller and the audience is like a two-manner road. The listeners are giving comments just as much as the storyteller is narrating the tale.
On the other hand, what's software program improvement? According to IBM (2023), Software improvement refers to a set of pc technology sports dedicated to the manner of making, designing, deploying, and helping software program.
The area of software program engineering as a creative activity isn't absolutely novel. Some works have already started addressing and revealing the approaches in which the sports of writing and programming, while extraordinary, can be noticed to have the equal essential intersection.
One of such research (Hermans and Aldewereld, 2017) attempts to draw a evaluation between writing and programming by comparing their dreams and challenges. While the end result discovered some differences between writing and programming, it also indexed seven steps of the two methods which coincide with each different (Burke, 2012).
On the alternative hand investigates to apprehend if there is any intersection among programming and writing thru the storytelling motif using a proper educational putting. The end result of this studies indicates the effectiveness of aligning writing with computer technology, as there may be an interconnected composition procedure. Why Are Griots So Important In Many African Societies?
There are also researchers like Bussell and Taylor (2006), Ciancarini et al. (2020), and Lloyd (2000) who aimed to alternate the point of view of human beings to peer how those approaches can research from each different. Ciancarini et al. (2020) reaches the principal finding that the improvement of software program engineering can be stimulated by means of the literature.
In Bussell and Taylor (2006), the authors shed mild on a aspect of software development that holds similar homes to some collaborative writing projects as an instance making movies. Lloyd (2000) centered on popular engineering design, but mentioned that engineering layout itself can be seen from three attitude of revel in. Individual revel in, social experience, and organizational enjoy, and that storytelling is an essential way to conduct and package social experiences.
All of these authors have shed mild and sparked the communication on the compatibility of programming and narratives: this paper narrows it all the way down to West African literature. The vicinity of West Africa was selected over different areas like North East Africa (exactly Egypt) due to the fact West African written literature started loads greater recent than other regions (Kelly, 2019).
In West Africa, whilst oral storytelling today is not as outstanding as it once turned into on account that human beings began learning to read and write, it's far nevertheless a major supply of data sharing.
This storytelling technique is a shared communal occasion wherein humans gather, listening, and taking part in bills and memories of beyond deeds, ideals, know-how, recommend, morals, taboos, and myths” (Utley, 2008).
In a similar way, software program improvement is likewise a communal manner where developers congregate collectively, discussing, designing, making plans, programming, trying out, and collaborating in money owed of a procedure. While this appears to be the most recognizable similarity between the two, Table 1 shows more.
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