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June 15, 2005
They Certainly Do Things Differently Over There!
Try as I might to be aware of the huge number of ways different companies view the art/science of software development, I find I'm becoming increasingly insular in my outlook on the alternatives, as a direct result (I suspect) of a solid diet of Agile methods, within a company of highly skilled software consultants.
So I was somewhat nonplussed when I re-discovered how class-ist some (usually) large financial companies are when it comes to organizing their development capacity. On my most recent engagement with such a firm, my collegue and I soon discovered a fairly rigid demarkation of duties amongst the resident development teams. Note: Although these seemingly draconian conditions are probably rife amongst this type of company, I've highlighted them here lest others have been similarly cocooned against the harsh reality of corporate development shops.
In short, the pecking order is as follows:
- Solution Architects produce copious amounts of documentation describing the system from this angle and that, which is then handed off to...
- High Level Designers, who take said documentation and generate more volumes of documentation on the system from a whole new set of lower-level perspectives, which is used as input by the...
- Low Level Designers, who then produce even larger wads of class diagram-like stuff as fodder for the...
- Developers, who translate said diagrams into code.
Some key points to note in the above hierarchy:
- Neither the Architects nor the Designers sully their hands with coding, thereby removing the best chance for concrete validation of their wares. This may/may not be a good thing :-)
- There is little/no official opportunity for the Developers to exercise any real creativity in their work; their only hope is to one day ascend to the exalted level of Designer, whereupon they are granted a license to create within the parameters of the architecture. As to whether the reality of development is in accordance with this doctine - I have no idea.
Now I, pragmatist that I am, have always believed that at the very least the core development practices of Agile/XP will make a team function much better, irrespective of whether the project itself dances to the Agile beat. In other words, in the face of unwavering resistance to the introduction of Agile mechanisms to plan and track a project, I can always get the code quality improved via the introduction of refactoring, test-driven development, pair programming etc, etc. However, implicit in this statement is the development team having the leverage to effectively use these tools, which usually requires enough empowerment to alter the design of the solution to accommodate changing requirements. In the types of environment detailed above, this sort of empowerment is not given to anyone doing the actual coding, rather it's seen as a privilege to bestow upon those lofty individuals who have moved beyond the lowly rank of Developer. This situation makes even a developer-centric introduction of Agile difficult at best, as the changes required to give the development team sufficient autonomy to use the practices appropriately must be mandated by the very people who have placed so little trust in the developers in the first place!
Posted by Andy Marks at 05:47 PM | Comments (1)
June 12, 2005
Say It Ain't So!
Warning: this article has absolutely no relevance to the IT industry whatsoever, all appearances to the contrary!
Every now and then, something comes along that I completely didn't expect: a high quality enterprise-level development platform from Redmond, for example. You sit back and think "well, there you go!".
Similarly, every now and then, something comes along that I should have expected, but cannot believe has come to fruition, like a US version of "The Office". In this case, appropriate thoughts might be something along the lines of "F**k me!"
There are those of you who may say "give it a chance, Andy - they might make a decent go of it", to which I would sagely reply "F**k you!".
I'm tempted to prolong this and start ranting about the abominable amount of arrogance required to think there is any need to improve on something like The Office, but I fear it will make me way too angry. Instead, I'll finish with a short message to US networks: "Comedy is just not your thing guys, leave it to the British. Sure, every now and then you'll strike gold with something like The SImpsons or Seinfeld, but generally you suck at it (Exhibit A: Everyone Loves Raymond). Go make another police drama... I'm sure we don't have enough of them showing yet!"
Posted by Andy Marks at 09:32 PM | Comments (6)