Social Factors
I mentioned Tom DeMarco just a couple of days ago. I'm re-reading his great book, Why Does Software Cost So Much?
Personally, I credit Tom as one of the unsung progenitors of the agile movement. Long before we had "Agile" or even "lightweight methods", Tom was talking about the psycho-social nature of software development.
For instance, here's an excerpt from essay 8, "Nontechnological Issues in Software Engineering":
Imagine your boss just plunked a specification on your desk and asked, "How long will it take you and one other person to get this job done?" What's the first question out of your mouth?
Would you ask, "Can we use object-oriented methods?" or "What CASE system can we buy?" or "Is it okay to use rapid prototyping?" Of course not. Your first question is,
Who is the other person?
Absolutely. Right on, Tom.
Comments
Tom Demarco's Slack is a great book. ( I suspect, you might have already gone through it)
In a discussion with a few colleagues today, I pointed out the relevance of Tom's message and argument of not running your machines (oops... resources,err, I mean people) at 100%.
Without that "capacity for change" (slack) order cannot emerge from chaos.
Isn't his argument similar to Goldratt's where he suggests extra capacity to account for statistical fluctuations? Given your insights into TOC, you might/will find Slack interesting.
Posted by: ArunBatchu![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 7, 2008 11:31 PM
Arun,
Slack is one of my absolute, all-time favorites. (DeMarco is so skilled at naming elephants that I'm jealous.) A couple of times, I've tried to find essential, quotable lines from Slack, but I end up just repeating the whole book.
In fact, I wanted to pull a couple of significant points for this comment, but it got ridiculously long because I can't think of anything to exclude from it.
-Mike
Posted by: mtnygard![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.michaelnygard.com/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
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June 8, 2008 08:54 AM