RE: Re: OT - poor word choice re: Managing Extreme Programming

Adding to Dan,

 

We are completing a transition to our parent company. The president of
our group is a former AT&T and Lucent president. For those uninitiated
developers his comments at the kick were eye opening. "we (the new firm)
need technical skills, this is critical to the success of the
firm....but more importantly we need customers...customers come from
sale guys..."  This point of view is much different than the previous
firm's professional engineering services view of business.

 

As an MBA-type (USC '80) understanding that both technical and business
skills are critical. Without both the firm's life will be short.

 

Glen B. Alleman

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Rawsthorne [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 11:31 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: RE: [xpAdoption] Re: OT - poor word choice re: Managing Extreme
Programming

 

Let me tell a (scary) story. When I was a young developer I was of the
opinion that the developers were the ones providing value to your
company. A wise old VP set me straight this way: "you can't do the work
if you don't get the money. When push comes to shove, we keep the
managers and sales guys and fire the developers. These guys know where
the money is, and we can always hire new developers"

 

This is a pretty awful thought, but prevalent in the industry, IMHO, and
is based on two views of "providing value":

-          making money for the company

-          doing something useful for a customer

 

We developers are trained to do the latter, and MBA-types are trained to
do the former. Very enlightened companies realize that providing value
to customers can provide money to the company, but few companies are
that enlightened...

 

Dan  ;-)

Dan Rawsthorne, PhD, Sr. Consultant
www.netobjectives.com
[email protected]
office: 425-641-0814

Net Objectives' vision is effective software development without
suffering. Our mission is to assist software development teams in
accomplishing this through a combination of training and mentoring. 

-----Original Message-----
From: banshee858 <[email protected]> [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 9:04 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [xpAdoption] Re: OT - poor word choice re: Managing Extreme
Programming

 

>
> Not quite sure what the gap is here. If the engineers and 
developers are
> not considered the folks who deliver the value for the firm, then 
who
> the heck is. Certainly not the managers. We're observers in the 
process
> of generating value for our customer (code, cars, nuclear waste 
removed
> to storage).
> 
> Please explain how this de-humanizes those who write code for 
money. Or
> better yet suggest a word that could be used for those who do the 
actual
> work of generating shareholder value for the firm.
> 
If you are talking about people, why not say people or folks?  Is it 
so hard to call the people who add value to the organization, 
people?  Or are we really just value delivery systems?  I highly 
doubt this is the case, but the phrase used suggests that to me.

I imagine business phrases like these are just shorthand for saying 
something complicated like, "people who deliver value for the 
organization".  However, it has been my experience, shorthand 1) 
really translates well outside the group it was intended for and 2) 
used often enough replaces the long complicated idea.    

I am only suggesting that language can really turn people off to what 
the messanger is saying, especially if the language is not very 
respectful.  HMMM...isn't this a complaint XP detractors have about 
XP proponents?  I might be onto something here...physician heal 
thyself!  






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