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Windows & .NET Watch: Losing control

By Larry O'Brien

August 15, 2009 — (Page 1 of 3)
Tom DeMarco has dropped a bombshell. His recent “Viewpoints” column in IEEE Software disavows several of the fundamental aspects of software engineering, including the premise that “control is an important aspect, maybe the most important, of any software project.” It isn’t, he says.

A stunning statement, given the source. DeMarco’s “Controlling Software Projects: Management, Measurement and Estimates” was among the most influential texts in the 1980s. For software managers of my generation, “You can’t control what you can’t measure” has been as much a touchstone as, say, “Don’t blame me; the requirements were incomplete.” DeMarco is one of the most influential people in our field, having written classic books both on his own and with Timothy Lister ("Peopleware," "Waltzing with Bears").

For many of us, the problems of software management have seemed to be problems of control; managing developers is like herding cats, choosing a technology is like landing a plane on an aircraft carrier, controlling client expectations is as important as developing software, and so forth.

It’s not that these problems are illusions, says DeMarco now. It’s that they don’t capture the potential of software. Sure, some software projects may only deliver a small payback on their development costs, but many software projects provide returns that are huge multiples of their costs, and they transform the business. Does it matter that a retail website had cost or time overruns if the payback is the transformation of a brick-and-mortar storefront into a global vendor? Does it matter that two tries at a new application had to be scrapped if the third try puts you on top of the market?

It strikes me (as things often do at this time of the year) as akin to baseball, where one can obsess over small-ball issues. But let’s face it: Stadiums get built for power hitters. The wonderful thing about software is that most software development teams can, if unleashed, propose software that has the potential to be transformative. Developers are necessarily immersed in software and technologies and will likely be the first to imagine recasting a domain problem into a new type of technology or platform.

Related Search Term(s): software development

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