Aehso’s Output

Joel Spolsky has produced yet another excellent essay, this time on Development Abstraction. The analogy between software developers cutting code and artists recording songs is a compelling one and I think it clearly illustrates what is missing in most software development organizations:

Nobody expects Dolly Parton to know how to plug in a microphone. There’s an incredible infrastructure of managers, musicians, recording technicians, record companies, roadies, hairdressers, and publicists behind her who exist to create the abstraction that when she sings, that’s all it takes for millions of people to hear her song. All the support staff and management that make Dolly Parton possible can do their jobs best by providing the most perfect abstraction: the most perfect illusion that Dolly sings for us. It is her song.

When you’re listening to her on your iPod, there’s a huge infrastructure that makes that possible, but the very best thing that infrastructure can do is disappear completely. Provide a leakproof abstraction that Dolly Parton is singing, privately, to us.

Without the invisible infrastructure the artist won’t succeed and I fully agree that the same applies in a development group. There is no point in having an orchestra and a conductor if they have instruments that don’t work and recitals are performed on the side of the road.

From a team process point of view these views dovetail nicely with the emerging development processes like Scrum. We recently adapted Scrum in Cape Clear (with a little help from exoftware) and the new process, with a little role changing, already seems to be having a major impact on development organization productivity.

(Spolsky is definately on a run with his use of prominent female figures in his analogies – his keynote presentation at EclipseCon 2006 a few weeks back was attention grabbing, hilarious and food for thought…)

aehso process, software