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- Path: sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!rocksanne!news
- From: kirby@xerox.com (Mike Kirby)
- Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
- Subject: Re: Debugging the process
- Message-ID: <1992Dec30.154316.12966@spectrum.xerox.com>
- Date: 30 Dec 92 15:43:16 GMT
- References: <peterd.725662638@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com>
- Sender: news@spectrum.xerox.com
- Reply-To: kirby@xerox.com
- Organization: Xerox Corporation, Webster NY
- Lines: 47
-
- In article 725662638@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com, peterd@pjd.dev.cdx.mot.com (Peter Desnoyers) writes:
- >kirby.roch803@xerox.com (Mike Kirby) writes:
- >
- >[lots of interesting points...]
- >
- >>All the SEI is saying is that you need to have a management process in
- >>place before an engineering process will be able to take hold. and you
- >>need both processes before you can determine if a product failure is
- >>due to engineering or to management. AND you need to be able to
- >>measure both. Once you can do these things then you will be able to
- >>continously improve the processes.
- >
- >This is the clearest statement I've seen yet of the SEI
- >misunderstanding that generates so much opposition among engineers.
- >
- >Management is not engineering. Management has the ability to hinder
- >engineering, and it has the ability to facilitate it. However, good
- >engineering can be performed (with difficulty) under bad managers;
- >conversely, good management does not guarantee good engineering.
- >
- > Peter Desnoyers
- >--
-
-
- If good engineering is performed under bad management it is because if the
- skills of the people. When those people leave, the bad management will "take over"
- and everything will be back to level 1.
-
- Contrary to popular belief, software engineering is more management then engineering.
- If a stable management process exists, and no engineering exists, a stable product
- can still be delivered. And this is indepenedent of the engineering talent in
- the organization.
-
- Explain how an engineering is going to tell his boss to go shove it when the boss
- comes and asks for another demo. After a while you will develop a perceived
- attitude problem and your performance evaluations will drop. You might not
- get fired, but you certainly won't get promoted, because the boss sees you as
- yet another whining engineer who doesn't understand what needs to be done
- to get funding, or to establish the necessary political connections. There
- becomes no economic incentive for performing good engineering because there
- is no understanding among management of what good engineering really is.
-
- Please explain how my statement was a misunderstanding of the SEI model.
-
- Mike Kirby
- Xerox Corp
- E-mail: kirby.roch803@xerox.com
-