Contract vs. Full-time

I've made another job change and this time I've returned to a mercenary's trade. I'm a contractor now (sometimes called consultant in IT circles). There's a long story behind why I decided to do this (some clues to which were in the last couple blog posts) but in the end I looked carefully at where I was and made a list of "reasons to stay" and "reasons to leave" and though there were some good reasons to stay, there were a lot more reasons to leave. Maybe more on that in a future post, but speaking of contracting, IT consultant Paul Glen has penned another very good one for Computerworld's April 19, 2010 issue.

In the essay, Glen cautions against not taking a closer look at factors involved in the contract-to-hire issue. His advice is usually sound and is so here, but a few omissions reveal his proximity to the ivory tower. Glen notes that contract-to-hire can be a good idea for both parties, but that some contractors may not be good matches for full-time employment if they are really happy with the consultant lifestyle (superior monetary compensation, travel, constant variety in projects and people) and may grow disenchanted with a full-time role.

Let's stop and think about that for a moment. In a previous post, I said I didn't like the way most IT shops used contractors, largely because I felt these shops were giving the most intellectually engaging work and pay to contractors and treating their full-timers like second-class citizens. Well, I still think that's true, and sadly, I've thrown in the towel on my hopes that this would change.

Glen's dancing with a contradiction here that contractors are somehow less valuable to an organization than a full-timer, even as he admits the contractor's duties are "fun and lucrative". What? Are full-timers not supposed to like work that is fun and lucrative? Are they supposed to ignore that mentally engaging and challenging work is often given to contractors while they are asked to sit and guard a light switch? Should they be only the types that "will gladly go to work on your help desk" for the rest of their lives with no upward mobility or appreciation?

I ultimately believe that Glen and I are on the same page about contractors. What I don't like is the article's failure to mention that if Corporate America wants to retain the best talent and bring it in-house, then Corporate America needs to give people a reason to want to be full-timers. There needs to be something to distinguish the full-time role and it doesn't start with looking at contractors and full-timers and trying to set them apart. What companies need to do is stand behind the lip service they pay to the hollow chant of "we love our employees" that they continue to print in their annual reports and recognize the value of the intellectual capital an employee brings through experience, expertise, and commitment to a company's clients, and to recognize the cost of turnover and mediocre quality. This means doing the things I've mentioned in the past: investing in employees, providing some education, and building an environment where they can take initiative to make changes in processes or tools that lead to efficiency and value. A company cannot crush employee morale and then expect miracles to happen. Even the most passionate employee can reach limits, right Mr. Glen?

There is a sad and disturbing analogy for this discussion: the US military. The military is outsourcing several duties (security details, civilian support) to companies like Blackwater and Halliburton. These contractors are paid handsomely for their services; significantly more than the US's own line troops. The US soldiers risk their lives for a client whose appreciation is suspect in a difficult war where the opponents have the honor of cockroaches. As the young privates and seasoned sergeants and even the priviledged officers look to their flanks on the battlefield, they see security consultants zipping by with better equipment, relaxed rules of engagement, and fat wallets. The army may be a volunteer force, but I think they can be forgiven for asking the understandable question, "Why?"

People will say, "Oh, but the full-time government troops have honor and job security the contractors don't have." Perhaps, but honor and 25 cents won't even buy a cup of coffee, much less pay the rent for the wife and children awaiting their father's return. And the job security is an illusion; if war should wind down, the army will be under the same pressures the consulting firms will be to cut costs.

People will say, "Oh, but soldiering is a calling, like teaching, so they don't need money." No way, you don't get to use an excuse that flimsy. Screw Jerry Brown and his "psychic income" cat crap. The bank won't accept psychic payments for the mortgage.

So here's where I get off the tangent and back to the point (as the readers, no doubt, say "thank God"). Yes, the reason some people like contracting is because it is fun and lucrative. But it doesn't have to be that way. Companies can, without having to break the bank (which they're already doing for contractors), make the full-timer proud to be a full-timer, and make the contractors want to be a full-timer. It's simple economics and capitalism: be competitive. Make full-time roles fun and lucrative.

It starts at the top with management.

• Have the philosophy that your employees do matter. Don't just say it; believe it.
• Be cognizant of what the compensation levels in the market are and competitively maintain your people's salary and benefits so the thought of leaving never occurs to them.
• Actively recognize them when they do something that helps the company.
• Find good projects for them that are engaging and not just about guarding light switches. You were able to do it for the contractors, I'm sure you can do it for the full-timers too.
• Let them keep their skills up to date. I'm not saying let them create a custom application inventory of a dozen disparate languages and platforms (no one should want that), but understand that technology is both your job and your responsibility. When a technology or technique comes along that can save time, reduce production support, make users and clients happy, and help the company in ways even the CEO doesn't know about, take the initiative to promote it and materialize it even when the PMO and the business may not have it on their radar because technology isn't their job and responsibility.
• When the PMO wants to make a project happen in an unreasonable time frame, don't throw your staff under the bus for personal gain. Yes, there are emergencies when unpaid overtime is a necessity, but if you're doing your job, they are the exception and not the rule.
• When your employees do work unpaid overtime, recognize and show appreciation for it. The contractors get that appreciation built into their rate and ability to bill per hour. Your full-timers don't, and when they look into the flanks and see contractors getting richer while they get poorer for the same work, or worse, for fixing the contractor's errors, believe me, they ask "why?".
• Appreciate what the mantle of management means. It means managing your employees. Don't wait for your full-timers to ask for a raise or a mentally engaging project. Some of them won't; they'll just vote with their feet, especially if you've been the kind that has enjoyed saying no to them several times in the past.

Contractors and full-timers aren't all that different, especially if you have been the type to use contractors in the same way you would use a full-time employee. They are both human beings and while yes, there are some differences in what each individual wants, at the end of the day it needs to be recognized that everyone's really there to make the mortgage and pay for college tuitions. If management could be less about cost cutting and more about building an environment that encourages the attitude of wanting to deliver world-class results and quality, then maybe production support wouldn't be so heavy, your full-timers could develop into the crack team that could do it all, and the need to ask who would be a good contract-to-hire candidate would go away.

Don't like what I have to say? Don't worry, it's just a rant. And I'm not holding my breath waiting for Corporate America to change.

Passion vs Professionalism

Passion: a powerful or compelling emotion

Professionalism (businessdictionary.com): Meticulous adherence to undeviating courtesy, honesty, and responsibility in one's dealings with customers and associates, plus a level of excellence that goes over and above the commercial considerations and legal requirements

Another good one from Paul Glen
I've enjoyed reading Paul Glen's articles on IT management, but was more ambivalent on Two Cheers for the Passionless, in which he calls out the convention that passion is needed to do great work. His argument is that he prefers professionals to the passionate.

My first reaction was to ask, "What about passion for professionalism, or passion for quality?" Upon re-readings of the essay, I have relented somewhat in Glen's favor. He concedes in the writing that passion can be pivotal in certain types of projects, but that the average work of IT people is often routine and better served by professionalism.

It's never that easy though!
However, I still think my question, "What about passion for professionalism, or passion for quality?" deserves an answer. I've come across my share of IT workers for whom it's all "just a job" and frankly, the quality of their work reflected this nonchalant attitude. These individuals did not hone their skills by reading about and learning new techniques. They attack the symptom but not always the root cause of issues in production support. They do not do a thorough job in the analysis, design, development, and testing of new systems or enhancements. In other words, these so-called professionals were unprofessional.

Glen is right that it can be very difficult to sustain the intensity of passion for long periods, and that in the swing downward from a high there is a risk the practitioner becomes depressed or apathetic if not hateful. But I think we're confusing some of our syntax and semantics here. What is the term for an enduring, lower-intensity passion? I don't think there is one. Conversely, what do you call the cadre of uninspired workers for whom it's just a job? I don't think professionals is the right word.

Mutually Exclusive?
Perhaps passion and professionalism are not mutually exclusive. Someone can be both passionate and professional. Passion is more about motivation while professionalism is about how a person carries himself in doing work and dealing with others. Work requiring intensity, focus, and vision almost demand some passion especially when time is limited and a project needs sacrifices (such as unpaid overtime). I therefore believe Glen's definitions of passion and professionalism are narrow in the article. How do you explain the phrase "a life-long passion" if passion is something that cannot be sustained? How do you explain professionals that vary in competence and thoroughness? The phrase "over and above" in the businessdictionary.com definition of professionalism indicates an above average motivation.

In conclusion, I'll split the difference with Mr. Glen. Professionalism, and the competence and honorable behavior it implies, is what we should aspire to uphold. I think it's ok to have some passion for it.

Software Development Math

First, let me apologize for the previous blog post. I was in a disturbed state about a number of things, and that last post was all over the map. Sadly, my friend did pass away and the thought of his wife and young daughter continuing on without him is painful. We have no choice but to bear it.

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Have you seen the old joke circulating around the Internet called something like "The Math of Love"? It has some very funny observations about life illustrated in the form of equations. For example:

• smart man + dumb woman = pregnancy
• dumb man + smart woman = affair
• smart man + smart woman = romance
• dumb man + dumb woman = marriage

In the same spirit, here are some equations about software development that I've come across. I preface by offering that these are entirely my opinion and could be wrong. But if you find yourself laughing at even one of them, then I can't be too far from the truth.

Developers

• good requirements + good developer = good application
• bad requirements + good developer = challenged application + massive production support
• good requirements + bad developer = bad application + massive production support
• bad requirements + bad developer = bad application + massive production support
• developer that never has to support own work + always awarded projects = overtime for everyone else
• developer lacking business knowledge + software project = unhappy user
• humble developer + user interaction = forged relationship
• arrogant developer + user interaction = missed opportunity + missed gaps + unhappy user
• arrogant developer + never has to support own work + aversion to learning = charlatan
• developer + aversion to learning = outsourced

Project Management

• good project (on time and on budget) - good requirements = happy managers + unhappy users
• rushed project = overtime
• bad requirements = overtime
• poor project manager = overtime
• managers that think software development is easy = overtime for everyone except the managers
• unpaid overtime = happy manager + unhappy everyone else
• project manager + technical decisions = unhappy developer
• business analyst lacking business knowledge = bad application
• business analyst that fails to challenge requestor = scope creep + overtime + unhappy user
• executives that can't hack the truth = overtime
• overtime + bad requirements + bad developers = BUSINESS AS USUAL

IT Just Doesn't Matter!

No, this isn't a reprise of Nicholas Carr's controversial but revenue-earning published treatise that "IT doesn't Matter"...although I suppose it is in a far grander and abstract sense. It's actually a reprise of a Bill Murray line from the movie Meatballs.

Murray, a summer camp counselor in the movie, is trying to inspire a rag tag collection of youths that, if I recall correctly, have either just lost or expect to lose a challenge to a rival camp. Murray, in a rant that starts out calmly enough, sings the truth about all challenges in life. The point is that everything we do is just another step through the collections of experiences that make our lives what they are. It's not worth worrying about losing a sporting event in summer camp because in the end, it just doesn't matter. At the end of the speech, Murray is screaming the words "it just doesn't matter" over and over again. Total silliness, and yet spot on.

Another way to think of this is to understand that we cannot fear failure. It's hardly a new concept. For decades, MAD Magazine's Alfred E. Neuman has been saying, "What? Me Worry?" and of course there's the old adage, "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again," and it's funnier cousin, "If at first you don't succeed, you're about average." Perhaps William Saroyan put it the most eloquently when he said:

We gain more wisdom from failure than we do success.

My own personal quote about this:

Failure is an event, success is a destiny.

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I just got back from hauling my family out on an emergency trip to visit a friend five states away from where I am. It was a long two-day drive out and another two days back, with just a day in between to spend some time. He has taken terminally ill, and the thought of losing him when he is relatively young both saddens and angers me. It is not fair and it is too soon.

But it certainly puts things in perspective.

I gripe about incompetent supervisors, soulless corporations, and incompetent software development practitioners on this blog, all in the name of trying to make life better for those that live in the code. My hope is that we don't have to while away too much time working unjustified overtime; that is, overtime executed by the programmers to compensate for mistakes sometimes their own but mostly of management.

Perhaps in the end, though, it just doesn't matter. Here are some lessons I've heard before, but that have been emphasized in the last few days.

Life is Short
You know, I have heard this so many times that I think the words have lost their power. You almost have to get hit in the head by the sledgehammer of life to appreciate it. Barring a miracle, I'm told my friend may be leaving in his early 50's. He will be survived by an eight-year-old daughter. It's just too damned soon; he will miss a lot of amazing parts of her life. So perhaps getting organizations, most of which have the inertia of a battleship, to change course, is folly. Maybe all those cynical bastards on the Joel On Software forums who always tell people, "Don't fix that rotten situation, just bloody leave," might be right. I know this isn't always true, but if you're meeting resistance from the top, remember that life is short.

Life is not Fair
Everyone says this. Everyone knows it. But once again, what's happening to my friend is downright rotten and really bringing the point home. He suffers while Ken Lay got a quick out. He is a good man, intelligent and congenial to all. I do not know him to have ever wronged someone. But we are surrounded by unethical nincompoops who take enduring enjoyment of life's spoils. I am wary to say that my friend was not wealthy, for wealth is not just about money, and my friend has lived a grand life and knows love. But the cretins I write of have also achieved diverse riches often while on the backs of others. Life is not fair, and it's short too. There are times when good men need to be a little selfish if they want to keep the fires burning as long as the other bastards. US citizens don't like it when they hear about their troops dying at the hands of cowardly guerilla tactics, but the US special forces also employ guerilla tactics. It's not necessarily cowardly; when the odds are against you, sometimes it's the only option you have to survive. Tactics and strategies aren't good or evil; it's about the cause and the way they're applied. Building relationships with the indigenous population to get information, or using laser targeting to bring stronger ordance against a fortified position to protect your own troops is smart. For any terrorists that think I'm giving them a pass, sorry, suicide bombing a marketplace full of people that have nothing to do with your war is stupid and cowardly.

Money is not Evil
My friend was not a millionaire by any means, but he did well enough, and he made some good decisions. He invested his earnings into a fine home, which he will bequeath to his surviving family. He has a pension they can use. He bought a life insurance policy. He will be leaving behind a wife and daughter, and some step sons. We are often taught to think of money as an object of evil or superficiality. My own mother tells me, "We should love people and use things, but instead it seems most of us love things and use people." She is right but like strategy and tactics, money is not good or evil. Money is a tool; in the hands of a good person, it can do great things.

Even in the hands of a bad person it can do great things. From Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like it in the World, I learned that the businessmen behind the transcontinental railroad were likely those that could be accused of "loving money". They were some downright corrupt bastards. But the transcontinental was borne of ideas from great men like Abraham Lincoln, Grenville Dodge, and Theodore Judas. Lincoln, Dodge, and Judas are regarded in the book as ethical men and long-term thinkers; the kinds of men that made America great. But they could not have built the transcontinental without the help of some downright corrupt bastards. Good men should be a little selfish sometimes and take a lesson from Issac Asimov's Foundation:

Don't let your morals get in the way of doing what's right

When software developers have to choose between career options, of course the best advice is to look at more than just the money. However, there's no dishonor in taking the bigger piece of pie if it's not doing anyone any harm, and you might be able to do more good.

Lessons Learned
With regard to software development, remember:

• Life is short: You have a family you are responsible for. Giving extra hours to a soulless corporation will ultimately be less satisfying than giving them to your family. You don't know when your diety will tell you, "Put down that keyboard. Don't bother collecting your shit. It's time to go."
• Life is not fair: There is a place for honor in this world, but it is best reserved for friends. Corporations, especially public ones, have too many stakeholders that don't care about human life. And your competitors, those hacks that leave their clients in a bind to jump to contracts featuring new languages or higher pay, well, unfortunately many of them have reputations for being productive because they cheat by writing shit code that they don't have to maintain. It may seem loathe to do, but sometimes you have may have to do the same. Just try to make it a better quality hack than the other guy's. Somewhere down the line another developer will appreciate it.
• Money is not evil: You might make the mortgage, but you'll never be a philanthropist that opens a cancer research center if you work for a company that thinks making software is easy.

The Free Guide to Corporate Cost Cutting

All right. I've had enough about this cost-cutting business. I've seen it cycle back and forth through my 20 year IT career, and I'm giving free advice here for anyone that cares. Although it's going to sound like a rant, there might be a couple crumbs of usable information. If anyone finds it valuable, you don't even have to credit me...just do something right in your organization to help your people and we'll call it even.

Reduction in Force

The human resources favorite since the early-1990's. Don't hold your discipline, diet and exercise plan accountable; chop off an arm to lose weight fast. If that doesn't work, try chopping off a leg. Plus, the press loves seeing employees get pounded. Company stock always rises after layoffs.

Although layoffs are generally derided by critics, I'm actually not as down on them as I used to be. Political correctness has changed the employment landscape such that you can't easily fire people for things like incompetence...now you can only fire them for really egregiously wrong things like offending someone's politics or hurting their feelings. And whatever you do, don't release someone that's a minority! Kicking out the elderly is apparently ok.

It's no secret: the companies today use the economy as an excuse to release marginal performers. I'm ok with that, as a part of the evolution of business tactics. In fact, bring on a boom and recession every other year. You need some time to evaluate people and figure out who your sinkers, swimmers, and floaters are. If the organization doesn't have the guts to call it on the sinkers after six to twelve months, then the layoffs are the next window of opportunity. Just be careful to hunt down the truth in the proceedings; you don't want to keep a swimmer that's really just a sloppy hack that's good at politics; analyze the train wrecks they've left behind them.

Sundry Cuts

If I cut pencils out of our budget, I'll save (number of employees X $.35)!

Cutting menial items out of your budget can save money. But it can have effects in other areas. There is a price of doing business. If you are not willing to pay it, don't do business. If you cut in too many ways, you risk looking unprofessional to your clients. Even if that lack of professionalism is superficial, the appearance of impropriety can have effects just as damaging as the actual impropriety. Consider the value of first impressions.

I once had to tell guests that we didn't have coffee cups for a meeting they were attending because of cost cutting. That's damned embarrassing.

I had a friend at another company tell me the company would no longer reimburse airport parking fees. That's damned embarrassing too. Look, cut by asking the employees to find more competitive parking rates, perhaps, but they're traveling for you, so cover the travel costs. Those travel expenses are legitimate 100% business deductions. Can you say the same about expensive bottles of wine at the executive lunches? (If you answered "yes" to that last question, you're a cheating ratbastard! US tax code limits meal and entertainment deductions to 50%, unless given as a documented form of employee reward).

Costs you can cut:

• Extravagances like vanity, which pay for expensive end tables in the organization's lobbies, golf trips where clients aren't involved, and ridiculous marketing projects like endorsing a sports team that has nothing to do with your business and clients (think EDS and bike racing, or EDS and herding cats, or EDS and stupid logo changes, or EDS and a marketing brochure that actually offended EDS employees).


• Extravagances like favoritism, through which a cost control measure only applies to the grunts and not to leadership. Of course, that never happens in your company, because you don't just preach "leadership by example," you practice it too...right? Right? Bueller?


• Extravagances like cronyism, in which large swaths of staffs turn over because one key guy comes in. It's not wrong to bring in fresh blood or known resources, but they should be vetted by more than just the head crony. Sometimes a crony might be an upgrade for a position, but sometimes talented and experienced indigenous staff get carelessly discarded in the process. And typically, cronies don't come for less money than what they made in their previous positions.

Cutting insignificant things saves the organization insignificant money. Go for the things that are costing real money and compromising morale every day.

Tools

Engineers, developers, and accountants don't need fancy tools to get things done. They've done without them for years.

People that have been in business for a while know this: payroll is a profit killer. Don't believe me? Ask leaders in any business as small as a restaurant or as big as General Motors. Hence, "reduction in force" being the number one cost-cutting maneuver.

But only an idiot thinks a company can survive without workers. That's why leaders always pay lip service to publicizing people as one of their pillars of strength.

So if you can do nothing else, make the employees you have more efficient. Yes, an automated testing tool will cost money and require time to set up. Yes, computer aided design means having some powerful workstations and some expensive software. But the right tools make your staff more efficient, a cost-cutting act of its own although sometimes difficult to quantify or measure.

But it's not just about making it easier for one person to do a job that used to require several. It's reducing the errors now that cost money to fix later. It's about making people downstream in the process both more efficient and happier because the output passed from the group before them is better.

Education

Let's cut training. It's expensive and our people don't need more skills to do the existing work; they already know how to do that.

The first casualties during a cost-cutting phase always seem to be training and testing. In the same vein as Tools, above, training is a way to keep your workforce current. Automakers don't build cars the same way today that they did two decades ago, and those that do are about to die. You must be competitive to survive, and this means keeping up with advances in engineering, continuous improvement, project management, software, human resources, compliance, law, accounting, and the business of your industry. If you aren't willing to pay the price of doing business, get out.

It's true training costs money. But contrary to what some leaders believe, it's less expensive than churning employees. Churning as I see it is the practice of not training your staff, burning them out, then replacing them with cheap college graduates who have been exposed to new skill sets and methodologies, of course at lower salaries. But turnover as a strategy doesn't take into account the cost of lost experience and relationships within the organization. Training can be a cheaper strategy because it can be measured as a set cost instead of a strategy in which there are superficial gains but dangerous, unexpected, and more difficult to measure intangibles and side effects.

Business Analysis and Testing

We need to get something done and it has to be done by a certain time. Let's set a deadline without doing research first on what's involved.

This point has more to do with business process than cost-cutting, but as I noted above, testing and training are typically given the short shrift on projects even when cost-cutting isn't a focus.

Why does this continue to be a mistake organizations make time and again? Karl Weigers in More about Software Requirements, lists this as the first cosmic truth about requirements:

If you don't get the requirements right, it doesn't matter how well you execute the rest of the project.

Weigers isn't sharing a trade secret here. Anyone that's been through the pain of a project that was subject to poor requirements definition knows this.

I'm not going to bitch any more here about the folly of not giving business analysis its due. But instead, here's another quote from another writer, George Santayana. You don't have to pay it any heed, writers are idiots anyway.

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Executive Salary

Says the rabble: Why give so much money to one guy? The company could save a half a million dollars if the CEO didn't have such a high salary.

Despite this blog's rants against misguided management, I have ambivalent thoughts about executive salaries. It's easy to point fingers at the top guy's compensation and say it's a point for cost-cutting. But it isn't always a logical point. For a truly large company whose economies of scale are in the multiple billions of dollars, re-distributing the $500,000 salary of the CEO to the thousands of employees would represent only a small adjustment to them. It's a convenient scapegoat. If it could be reduced, sure, that's a nice gesture that can be taken by those that practice silly things like leadership by example, but it's going to have a limited effect on the final numbers.

A good and sensible leader that has made proven decisions to secure a company's viability (not just ridden the wave during good economic times) , is worth a competitive salary. I think in most cases, this is a part of the cost of doing business (although I would caution executives from getting too heady about this. If you believe you can outsource a software developer to a cheaper but comparably educated one in another country, allow too that you could you swap out an executive for a cheap and perhaps even better educated foreign PhD in business).

A more appropriate subject to cost-cutting is compensation for failed executives. Political correctness once again rears its ugly head here: HR departments are expected to provide some severance for terminated employees. Superficially, this appears to be a policy of humane intentions, to provide some relief to the separated. However, it's probably also the recommended approach in HR circles to prevent lawsuits. The stories of substantial payments to executives that left their companies in worse repair than when they got there are all over the headlines. This is ludicrous. It's not as if those executives weren't paid well when they were running the show. Some of the golden parachutes would have paid the facilities maintenance staff's salaries for years. Why would you pay so much to a person that made messes instead of giving it to the people that clean up messes?

Caveat: let's be careful not to vilify executives that, in contrast to a fair weather CEO, may have made reasonable decisions but had nothing to do with greater economic forces that affected all businesses.

Employee Salaries

Everyone must share in the sacrifices made to maintain the solvency of the company and prevent additional layoffs.

As a survivor of this tactic, I can appreciate its intentions. Everyone takes a pay cut, so there is no appearance of inequity.

But if this is done, do it universally across the organization. When you say everyone, you should mean everyone. If one department takes the hit, how does it affect morale when other divisions don't? And in past years, when the other divisions weren't doing as well and the affected department was sustaining them, did they also get cuts? Despite good intentions, is a nasty precedent being set?

It's also probably better to take an even percentage across the board. The companies I've seen do it use a graduated scale so that higher earners take a larger percentage cut. This is a cost-cut, but some would say it's also taxation without representation. It means, assuming your company is a meritocracy (a huge assumption, I will concede), that the people awarded higher salary increases sustain a proportionally higher sacrifice than those that did not earn the same increases. Suddenly the appearance of equitability has a few cracks in it.

Cost-cutting is Reality

Cost-cutting is a reality of life. It is neither good nor bad, and everyone should be trying to do it all the time, not just in recessions. But some ways of doing things are probably better than others. Good luck.

The Truth

The truth is an important thing when you want to get to the bottom of something and having the truth is the most important part of making decisions. This isn't just about programming but everything in life. The problem is that the truth is often at odds with tact.

Things to remember about the truth:

Sometimes, the truth will make people laugh.
Sometimes, the truth will hurt.
Sometimes, the truth will set you free.
But always, the truth will piss someone off.

Best is the Enemy of Good

Continuous Improvement
It was encouraging to me that my company decided to host a continuous improvement activity for the development group in our IT shop. If you've never done one of these before, it's related to process improvement and such things as LEAN and Six Sigma.

What I didn't understand before the activity was that LEAN is not about solving the root of the problem, it's about trying to streamline and make more efficient all the peripheral things in the total process. For example, in our workshop we identified that some of the production support load we get is from misdirected requests that should have gone to a different group. So we're taking steps to better educate users and other support personnel so they can reduce this source of inefficiency.

However, I asked about the fact that the real source of production support loads is often poorly built software, and it was accepted by the session consultant that indeed, LEAN does not always address the root problem. The example he used was from when he worked with a group that performed drilling on a designated area. Improved productivity could have been had by using a faster drill or technique, but that was not what LEAN was about. It was instead about all the particulars of the process leading to, during, and following the drilling, and removing wasteful elements in these phases of the total effort.

Another Adage
Anyway, improvement is good in any space, so I'll take what we get out of it even if it means the software we're using is still seriously flawed.

One of the interesting things emphasized during the workshop, however, was:

Don't let best be the enemy of good

This was meant to keep us from succumbing to paralysis by analysis. I've heard this same sentiment in another quote from Patton:

A good plan now is better than a great plan ten minutes from now

I can't disagree with the gist of those platitudes, but there is a fundamental problem facing most software teams that try to use that quote for enlightenment. What if the battle they're fighting isn't between good and best, but good and mediocre or poor? My version of the quote is therefore:

Best is the enemy of good, but don't confuse good with
mediocre

Remember: making software is easy, but making it right is hard! It is too easy to lower your standards and say "good enough." But as complicated as software is, the truth is that "good enough" is probably "bad enough" since corporate software is often poorly designed and poorly tested. Even if it is good enough, chances are you'll have to change it, and good enough can quickly become not-so-good.