Creation vs Production

Now and again I read the articles by Joel Spolsky on his blog Joel on Software. By chance, I got into reading an article he wrote on July 25th, which is called Hitting the High Notes.

In this article, Joel writes about a lot of things I agreee with. However, I would like to take it a step further. I think that a lot of bad project management and crappy software productions are due to a fundamental misunderstanding.


Let us take a generic manager. He or she knows a lot about how to build businesses and production processes and has come across a fair share of project models during his career.

The problems show up when this manager starts thinking of software development, or let's just call it programming, as a type of production.

Production is performed according to a recepie. Creation is by the beans with wich we come up with the recepie. A good programmer spends plenty time on the analysis and prototyping. The production part will be a very small part of the job performed.

Spending time on analysis and prototyping often involves tasks tha might not look like work. The manager simply must trust the programmers in doing a good job.

So, dear manager. Here are some key notes for you:
1. Without a sense of trust from the manager, all creativity dies.
2. A creative perfomance can only be meassured by the quality of the product and the ability to meet agreed deadlines.
3. If a programmer says he needs a day off, let him take it.
4. Do you count EVERY overtime hour the programmer works? No, I didn't think so. Then don't count his day off either.

...and don't forget...
If a good programmer is treated as a production unit. The company will have one less programer as soon as another opening is available.