To conjecture about what is going on, I suppose there is a natural tension in life. While life is complex and messy, we always hunger to get it under better control. I guess this hunger for better control creates a demand for theories, books, and training courses. An industry grows to satisfy this demand, churning out theories, books, and training courses, telling us how to manage better.
But this makes me think of another industry, the one which produces love songs. Love songs are not exactly about the way love is, but are about the way we hope love might be. If you want to find the recipe for a successful love song, I would suggest you start by mixing 1/3 cup of reality with 2/3 cup of hope. And I guess similar proportions may be necessary to write a successful book about software process management.
As I see it, probably a younger person is more vulnerable to disappointment, upon discovery that reality is ugly when compared with the images created by love songs and management theories.
I do not suggest that theories are bad. Theories are essential to the advance of life, because some of them turn out to be true enough. But disappointment is probably an inescapable cost incurred in the experience of sorting the good from the bad theories.
Rich Hammer
If you feel down, just remember: "Love will find a way" "Write once, run anywhere"
James Jeffers wrote:
Greetings to all on the list:
This is a general question, and not necesarilly aimed at Java alone.
I haven't been able to attend any recent TriJUG meetings for a couple of months now. I nabbed a job as a contractor at IBM, and I've been working long hours almost every day. In any case, the project I am on is a very unique application development opportunity.
The other developer I work with is an extremely talented individual. He has a long list of design and imlementation accomplishments going back almost 30 years. He's done electronics, ASIC work, and so on. Software seems like another one of his talents. In this regard, it's been a pleasure working with him.
On the other hand, he's used to working for himself or by himself. He described most of his programming/design experience as gleaning small bits of usefull from a cloud of entropy in his head! Since I was added, I've taken on the task of enforcing some measure of SCM (local CVS, mirroring the repositories to several machines daily, weekly putbacks to IBM's SCCS system, handling defect reports, etc.). My manager recently told me that I seem to be a good Yin to the other person's Yang. I felt really good about that.
But it worries me that the application that this other person has spearheaded is losing focus. I don't think that there was ever a lot of time devoted to either design or requirement considerations. A lot of features are coming out as we get response for our customers. I can certainly see how much of the work that has gone on has been directed by these conditions. But then, I see that a software development schedule has already been put into place.
I'm feeling a lot pressure to get the work done as soon as possible. Like I mentioned, we've been working a lot of ours (100+ in one week is not uncommon). I fear that were taking shortcuts that will come back to haunt us, especially as more changes and features are required in future iterations. I mentioned a possible solution to the chaos was to sit down and rebuild what we have using an MVC like pattern to provide some sort of insulation against the changes to come. So far, this hasn't been done.
IBM is not new to software design and implementation. We have LOTS of talented people and experienced managers. With the exception of 1 or 2 people, the project and technical leads have extensive product engineering experience. But it seems like the 30 years of software engineering research and recommendations are being ignored.
Our schedules are being presented without regard to their basis in reality. There are no code inspections. Up until about a month ago, there was no SCM to speak of. And on and on.
Is this normal? Do any you out there on the list have any experience with an organization that "got it" and walked the walk? Did you ever work in a place where they just didn't read the books, but applied them? I'd love to hear about it, or any recommendations you have.
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