10,000 Foot Developer

Several times over my career I’ve been in places with legacy management styles that plain do not understand software development at all.  And I am always told this by those businesses:

“Software development is just a skill.”

Its always by people who have never been a developer in their lives at all.   They almost always hire the rock-bottom priced labor, and always pay for their received product three times more by over-micromanaging and ignoring the fact, the fact, that to create software a particular skill is just a piece of the set of things required to make good sound software.

How about some analogies:

• Painting is just a skill.   But would you say there is a bit of difference between Picasso’s work, and the Museum of Bad Art?  Why is that?  After all they both had the skill of painting.
• Aeronautical engineering is just a skill.   But why would the Douglas DC-3 deemed as the world’s most successful commercial plane ever, vs. the Spruce Goose who’s time was past when it attempted flight.
• Management is just a skill right.   That’s why IBM and Enron should both have succeeded.
• Writing is just a skill.  That’s why Pearl Buck’s “The Good Earth” and the Penthouse Forum are equivalent in literary impact.

The places that get drained of funds by software have the “skill” attitude.   I’ve seen it at the low level, I read about it n WSJ at the 10,000 foot level.

Part of my job now is to educate the people on why development extends beyond just a skill.  There are a LOT of inputs to consider:

• Culture: Poor or good technical leadership.  PM’s cannot provide this, and using non-technical people to do technical leading can result in failure.
• Culture; Setting up command-and-control environments.   These environments will drive away self-motivated engineers, because they will not be able to act; and only attract people comfortable in showing up and doing what they are told.   A place can’t have both, sorry.   It’s culturally based, that’s why.
• Culture: innovation.  So your company wants innovation?  How are you going to get that if you hire followers and give them no time to innovate?  Or do you think that people not involved directly in the technology you want will be able to to think up uses for it?
• Oil changes.  Software needs upgrading, and if it doesn’t get it, you will suffer.  Oh yes you will.
• How do requirements get translated into reality?
• The moving-targets of new technology and support and staff rollover.

Development involves a whole slew of highly cognitive activities including technical prowess, communication skills, the ability to become experts at software that manages a business they have not studied, keeping up on the tools and new tools and technologies, and of course the highly, highly difficult part — the actual making of software so that it works, is testable, supportable, and does the goal of the business.  Not everyone can be a developer — not at all.   To write it off as “just a skill” is painful to my ears.