I am a big movie buff. I watched every episode of Project Greenlight on HBO. If I lived anywhere near one of the theaters that was playing it, I would have gone to see "The Battle of Shaker Heights". While watching Project Greenlight, I started to become very frustrated. Not about the show, but about my job.
Monday, our architect took it upon himself to upgrade a part of the database. This wasn't a release or planned or anything, just a minor upgrade... That killed the search capabilities of the system. Many authors (de Marco for one) have been saying for a long time that the software industry is not like the manufacturing industry. To my knowledge, no one has really come up with a parallel industry for software, so I am going to take a stab at it now.
The software industry should be like the movie industry. It is more about the definition of roles than anything else. The producer is in charge of the entire movie, you won't find him telling the actors how to act. That is the director's role. Now the producer will try to influence the director, but that is the producer's job. The actor doesn't tell the camera man how to shoot a picture, that is the Director of Photography's job. Everyone in the movie industry has a very distinct role, and the industry knows that there is a NEED to have these roles filled. Even for small films like "The Battle of Shaker Heights" they have a lady whose job it is to follow the directors around with a script and tell them what the actors are actually supposed to be saying.
I think there are some very interesting parallels between the software industry and the movie industry. Unfortunately, few people in the software industry take their roles seriously. They want to get involved with everyone else's role.
Also, it is expected that they will not have the ENTIRE team up and ready to go from the very beginning. The set builders don't hang around for post production, they go work on other movies. The actors aren't involved or even hired when the set is being built. People roll on and off of the team when they are needed. We are done with our GUI designer, so why is he sticking around waiting for the product to launch? Couldn't he be helping out another project? If not, wouldn't this be a good time to send him on vacation? I mean, it has to be better than him sitting around doing continuous tweaks to the interface. Right?
Let me know if I am off my rocker on this one. I think it has some potential. But then, I think it would be cool to have secretaries be testers too.
Posted by carl at August 27, 2003 01:28 AM
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