Friday, October 14, 2011
Sadly, software development is no longer about writing software...
OK, by now you are more than familiar with my rants on the differences between management and leadership and how I hate that many people in IT use these words interchangeably. Another evil is when you hear a PMP certified process weenie refer to their Project Management Lifecycle (PMLC) as a Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). So today, as a wannabe Gartner analyst, I am coining a new term: Developer Oriented Development (DOD)...
If we are to improve the quality of software being delivered to customers, we must acknowledge that we already have enough focus on tests, metrics and processes but spend way too little time on allowing developers time to write better code. Below is a simple process steps of things you can do to improve code.
1. Allow only talented people to write code. Let's face it. There are people out there writing code who really shouldn't be. They produce bad code and take away time from people who could have written it properly in the first place to have to spend time remediating it. So, let's solve for competence as the first step.
2. Afford talented developers time they need to think about the problem they need to solve. Yes, PMP weenies you need to stop filling developers time with meetings that are nothing more than ceremonial blowhard jamborees. They don't need to hear you read the project charter out loud that you cut-and-paste from another project that came before it.
3. Let developers actually write code. This is the developers way of solving problems. Developers think in code so don't distract them with making them document in some form that is all about others and not about code.
4. Repeat steps 1 thru 3 until done.
I personally guarantee that if an Enterprise doesn't get a 5x factor increase in quality by trying my Developer Oriented Development methodology, I will eat my shirt in front of a large audience at the next Gartner conference...
| | View blog reactionsIf we are to improve the quality of software being delivered to customers, we must acknowledge that we already have enough focus on tests, metrics and processes but spend way too little time on allowing developers time to write better code. Below is a simple process steps of things you can do to improve code.
1. Allow only talented people to write code. Let's face it. There are people out there writing code who really shouldn't be. They produce bad code and take away time from people who could have written it properly in the first place to have to spend time remediating it. So, let's solve for competence as the first step.
2. Afford talented developers time they need to think about the problem they need to solve. Yes, PMP weenies you need to stop filling developers time with meetings that are nothing more than ceremonial blowhard jamborees. They don't need to hear you read the project charter out loud that you cut-and-paste from another project that came before it.
3. Let developers actually write code. This is the developers way of solving problems. Developers think in code so don't distract them with making them document in some form that is all about others and not about code.
4. Repeat steps 1 thru 3 until done.
I personally guarantee that if an Enterprise doesn't get a 5x factor increase in quality by trying my Developer Oriented Development methodology, I will eat my shirt in front of a large audience at the next Gartner conference...
