[lug] Developer abuse

[Bill Thoen]

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004, Dean Brissinger wrote:

> Neat.  Seen any articles that are more general though?  This is an

Yes... they're everywhere. There's whole libraries of books on the subject 
of software project planning and management, and how poorly it's done, and 
how that always results in death marches, blown budgets, lousy software, 
diverse alarums and such.

How come software projects seem to be so hard to estimate correctly? Civil
engineers have standard practices and procedures and when they build a
20-story building, they generally know how much it's going to cost and
when it will be done -- in advance of the first brick being laid upon 
another -- and also they are relatively sure that if some 14-year
old kid sneaks in the back door some day that he isn't going to be able to
drop the building like a house of cards by pushing the elevator buttons in
an unexpected order.

But I've yet to see very many software developers do much more than pay
lip service to project planning. How come it's so typical that they're so
bad at it?  Why do they accept unrealistic deadlines and budgets, or are
they just unable to plan a software project?  Is it because the tools keep
changing so fast that no one learns to get good at today's patterns
becuase tomorrow's completely new and different world will force you to
re-learn new patterns all over again? 

But if you ask me, anyone who lets himself or herself get used by a 
company to work 85-hour weeks as a standard operating practice for only 
40-hour's pay to make up for rotten planning is kind of a fool.

- Bill Thoen


> On Fri, 2004-11-12 at 11:35, Mike Stanczyk wrote:
> > Some of us were talking before the meeting about how developers are
> > abused in today workplace.
> > 
> > http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.html
> >