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Tim Lister on Project Sluts and Strawmen
cramco writes "Tim Lister, principal of Atlantic Systems Guild and co-author of 'Waltzing with Bears: Managing Software Project Risk,' and 'Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams' talks about the patterns that help determine software success or failure. Patterns good and bad include project sluts, Brownian motion, the strawman, and the safety valve."
The whore my book pattern.
Looks like yet another slashvertisment for an upcoming book/conference.
/real/ in-depth software engineering articles for once in a while?
It's a nice start, but lacking any real depth - the article could be summarised in one or two sentences, listing a number of good and bad practices. I know it's stripping people of their $DEITY-given right to derive fiduciary advantage from relaying information and opinion, but can we please have some
You get the project.
You get the people for that project. You work to form them into a team that can handle that project.
You adjust the specs as the project evolves until it either dies or hits the target.
Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than that. But that's the basics. Any company that has people juggling multiple projects is going to have problems. The same with any company that forms teams without projects.
And getting together with your co-workers after work just so you can bond? Fuck that. If it happens, it happens. But do NOT try to institutionalize it. All you'll do is end up with a bunch of people waiting for the first person to leave so they can all go home to their families.
Let me tell you, nothing motivates me more at work than a project groupie who will bang me for completing on time.
What do you mean not that type of slut?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Interactive Visual Medical Dictionary
FTFA...
... I'd like people to think about patterns - abstracting their work and recognizing the patterns they're in, good and bad, and making informed decisions to promote those patterns or replace them.
Lister: I get chills when I hear that phrase. From my point of view there are some pretty good practices, but no best practices
So, Lister... would thinking about patterns be a best practice?
Uh-oh! the chain of logic has been attached to itself, we're trapped in a circle from which there is no escape!!
The whore my karma pattern.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
And getting together with your co-workers after work just so you can bond? Fuck that. If it happens, it happens. But do NOT try to institutionalize it. All you'll do is end up with a bunch of people waiting for the first person to leave so they can all go home to their families.
Obviously, you hold their families hostage at an undisclosed location until the conclusion of the bonding is complete.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
Similar to the project slut pattern, but instead of saying "yes" to each project, multiple projects are forced on you, whether you can take it or not. Can lead to many "dead fish" projects (and bad jokes dealing with fish and fish smell).
Yes, it's an awesome idea until some PHB doesn't realize that software development is like and iceburg and forces dev to use the prototype as the production version.
"But, it looks 90% done!"
Speckerhead.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
Well, yes and no. Probably most people have some intuition the basics, but:
1. Some people are just incapable of implementing them, or can't be arsed.
2. Some people are operating in a brain-dead rules zone.
E.g., it's easy to say "hiring lots of people before you know what you'll use them for is wrong" (what he calls "brownian motion"), but sometimes lobotomized corporate rules twist one's arm to do exactly that. It could be that you have a fixed time window to do the hiring, or the ever popular "if we don't use this year's budget fully, we'll get a budget cut next year", etc. You'd be surprised how many anti-patterns are really just work-arounds for rules that sounded good on paper, to someone who's (A) not qualified to take that kind of decisions, (B) bored enough to take them anyway, or a new boss pissing on everything to mark his territory, (C) way too far disconnected from the data to base those decisions on, (for example by being several hierarchy levels too high, or in a whole different brach of the hierarchy altogether, and having no communication level to the people who actually know what's happening there), and (D) shielded from the effect of bad decisions (e.g., if there are any good results it's his merit, if it goes south fast, it's the fault of the henchman who had to implement them.)
Heck, you've given a very good example yourself. Even good ideas can be turned into bad and annoying rules, and there are a lot of places where exactly that happens. Bonding between people can be a good idea, and it can even be helped along a bit (but it's hard and most people don't have the necessary skills.) But then department A comes with a rule that says "thou shalt meet with your team mates at a pub once a week" (more often is always better, right?), department B comes and says, "but thou shalt do it on their free time, because we're not paying you lot to sit around and chat", department C comes and says, "and we're not paying for it", a boss change comes at department A and says, "nah, thou shalt use a meeting room, it's cheaper", and boss D come and says, "cool, I'll come along and motivate people with a speech. What could be more bonding and motivational than everyone hearing how great I am, and how any good results are due to my enlightened leadership?" What started as a good idea, was turned into the perfect recipe for a morale disaster.
(And, sadly, the above paragraph isn't made up. I know one place where exactly that setup was institutionalized.)
3. Some people operate on bogus data, and often are deliberately fed bogus data, for example by some underling who has something to gain from forcing a bad decision.
E.g., manager X figures out he'd get a promotion if he got just 5 more people under him (usually again a case of brain dead rules), so he'll actually support anything that makes it look like his project needs more people. Or will actively argue for "brownian motion" kind of arguing.
E.g., I've actually seen one sad case where someone sabotaged his own project just to show everyone that Java sucks, unlike his beloved VB. The guy not only couldn't be arsed to actually manage that project, and spent 90% of his time trying to manipulate unrelated non-technical managers (this wasn't a software house but a manufacturing corporation with an IT department) into seeing it all as "that's the kind of extra complexity Java produces), but actively changed specs or introduced random new requirements when the project looked like it was getting anywhere.
4. Some are just dishonest fucks, and just follow their own goals, which aren't the same as the company's goals. E.g., the guys mentioned at the previous point.
5. Some actually know what should be done, but don't have the spine or the authority to counter client aikido maneuvers.
E.g., saying "you should first make a disposable low-cost prototype" is good and fine. But I can tell you first hand that in a lot of cases the client has no clue what's the difference between a HTML prototype and a full
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Good point. But you have to admit, some of these replies are because the people are replying are guilty of nearly everything wrong with what the article talks about. Deep down, I think they know it too, thus they lash out against an otherwise interesting article. I'll be looking into the book for sure.
Software engineering is not art as a whole, but there are facets where the decomposition and implementation of a software system can be viewed as an artform. Personally, my view is that it is seen as an art not only because of the creative aspect of programming (algorithm design or selection), but also due to the lack of maturity of the software engineering industry.
Industries such as Civil Engineering have had centuries of refinement, whereas the SE industry is relatively young, only really developing in the last half-century. We haven't had the same amount of time to derive generic methods to decompose systems, and as a whole, the industry acts as a set of disconnected islands - predominantly, not sharing information or practices.
In the last couple of decades, there have been forward strides made with regards to identifying patterns and other generic, reusable software engineering assets, but the overall industry is still immature. In addition, the diversity of projects leads to a higher degree of perceived (and perhaps, actual) complexity - to take a Civil Eng analogy, one day we (Software Engineers) are building bridges, the next we'll be building a space elevator, and the day after, constructing a skyscraper.
My personal belief is that it's a matter of time before software engineering as an industry matures, and before that occurs, the degree of sharing and derivation of generic, reusable software components needs to increase rapidly.