Is Process Killing the Software Industry?

blackbearnh writes "We all know by now that Test Driven Development is a best practice. And so is having 100% of your code reviewed. And 70% unit test coverage. And keeping your CCN complexity numbers below 20. And doing pre-sprint grooming of stories. And a hundred other industry 'best practices' that in isolation seem like a great idea. But at the end of the day, how much time does it leave for developers to be innovative and creative? A piece on O'Reilly Radar argues that excessive process in software development is sucking the life out of passionate developers, all in the name of making sure that 'good code' gets written. 'The underlying feedback loop making this progressively worse is that passionate programmers write great code, but process kills passion. Disaffected programmers write poor code, and poor code makes management add more process in an attempt to "make" their programmers write good code. That just makes morale worse, and so on.'"

Comments

The solution is simple...

[Old Sparky]

Get rid of management!

Re:Process

[roman_mir]

your comment is mostly wrong.

Only about 2% of programmers in a large company actually do most of the real work.

20% are good for chit chat.

78% should be fired immediately.

Re:Passion isn't important

[jbengt]

People who have passion about what they are doing are usually much more productive than people who view the job as a way to get a paycheck.

I work in engineering, not software, still, the last time I encountered a passionate IT employee, he got fired for taking long, passionate lunches at the hotel down the street with an electrical engineer and fixing their timesheets to cover up their absence.

On a more serious note, you don't have to choose between passion and apathy. I'll take conscientiousness over passion any work day. Passion can at times be dangerous to objective thinking, partner relations, or a professional standard of care.