The Lemma of Eternal Lateness
Behind the seven ball

In its original form this also dealt with the practice of software and systems development.

The initial statement was:

The only processes we can use on the current project were defined on previous projects,...
... which were different from this one [1].

The intent of this software process “law” was to point out to software developers that the processes they necessarily use on a project are always, to at least some extent, out of date. But software projects notwithstanding, this is a general issue for all people when confronted with novel situations.

It is particularly important in software development because the reason why we have a new project at all is that it is different from earlier projects. True, there are always things in a project that are similar, perhaps even identical, to earlier efforts. But, since we have already done them to some extent, these things are really easy to do; sometimes simply copying what was done before will work. The real effort on any new project is the stuff that is new. This is logical, of course, since the “new” stuff requires the discovery of new knowledge. And for that stuff, the processes from earlier projects might not be effective.

This is another context or meta level issue that occurs in most learning activities. If the “new” functions and knowledge are similar in type, structure, or learning modality, to functions and knowledge that were “new” on previous projects, much of the earlier process of identifying them should work well. If the people on the project have become versed in learning new things and in developing new or modified processes, their identification and application of what is needed should be quick and effective.

These two similarities reflect the thing (the knowledge required of the project) and the process (how the knowledge is obtained). These are simply reiterations of the knowledge object and knowledge acquisition process that were discussed earlier.

Software projects aside, any “new” activity we engage in will have some degree of this belatedness. Our experience is necessarily based on things we have seen before and lessons we have learned earlier. Our extant knowledge is always somewhat out-of-date, our knowledge context is always somewhat out-of-date and our learning process is always somewhat out-of-date. But this is mostly a problem if we don't realize it.

For support in this view, let's call upon the insights of comedy and Christian apologetics:

Experience is the knowledge you gain just after you needed it . . . . . . Steven Wright, comedian

Life can only be understood backwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soren Kierkegaard, philosopher

FOOTNOTES

[1] Armour, Phillip G. The Laws of Software Process. CRC Press 2004. P.12