On 3/5/07, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Bob La Quey wrote:
> While I too like working with "good" people and am
> sympathetic to what you and Gregory are saying there
> is still a voice inside that says, "Anbody can get the
> job done with 'good' peiople. No challenge there. The
> whol eproblem is how to get the job done with people
> who are 'not so good' ." (how the hell do you punctuate that?)
Again, why is it that software design is the *only* discipline which
expects to produce non-garbage results with garbage inputs?
It is not. The core notion that education can improve people is
all about doing better with the same inputs. You speak in an
exaggerated bluster. But why am I not surprised?
You don't expect below-average artists to draw or play above average due
to a "process". You don't expect below-average athletes to suddenly
beat their opponents due to a "paradigm shift". You don't expect a
below-average cook to suddenly produce good food because he decided to
be "agile".
Below average is by definition not playing above average. I do expect
education in many of its forms to improve the play of most players, including
those who are below average.
Obviously Talent != Skill. But a skilled boxer may well beat a talented
but unskilled one.
The problem is that managers want this to be true and never get held
accountable for when it fails. If an *entire* team from the VP down got
fired every time an IT project failed, IT failure would go away.
Sure, and if avoidance of failure is your only metric then go for it.
make damn sure you never undertake a risky project. Use only
the "best" people on the dullest of projects.
Frankly this sounds to me like a metric for failure of a larger sort.
The metric of the very insecure.
Suddenly, it would be *politically* important that somebody figure out
how to do things right.
Or simply how to do things safely.
> If all of our processes and theories are unable to help us
> do better with less then what good are they? Have we
> actually learned nothing?
Doing better with less can also mean accomplishing the same work with
fewer but better people.
Better people may simply be the same old people who have
better training.
Of course talent matters. But talent is not skill though a certain
level of talent is a prerequisite to accomplishment in any field.
There was only one Wayne Gretzky for sure, and if you ever saw
him play at his peak you understood how really unfair the world
is ... but for hundreds of journeymen passion, perseverance, dedication
often matter more than talent.
And there is something of value to be learned in software just
as there is in almost every field of human endeavor. Even the
"best" people know this, eh?
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