If developers are not just fungible, and development is not merely a collection of standard developers solving a problem, then what is going on? If you can't just replace a developer then that developer must be bring something unique to the task.
In reality developers come and go on a project. But we make accommodations, we reorganise ourselves to allow that developer to contribute their particular touches, the project changes because we changed developers. I think we under play the extent to which a new developer or the loss of a developer changes our work.
If we're not fungible then a development team is an accommodation that allows a bunch of developers to contribute their distinctive stuff to a unique solution in the effectively infinite space of possible solutions. (Okay, finite computer resources and acceptable execution time mean we're exploring a finite space of solutions, but it's a big space.)
If I was managing the project then I'd be trying to allow these distinctive craftsmen and artisans and artists and puzzle-solvers and engineers and explorers and scientists and philosophers to make something which brings sufficient value to enable us all to make living. The perspective becomes one of trust: I trust that these people will solve my problem.
It takes a lack of trust to prescribe how developers will do their work: if I define their roles to make them fungible then I'm almost definitively preventing their unique contributions and preventing them contributing their best. I suspect out of fear or some misguided fumbling after security we shape projects so that specific developers don't make a difference: but that way we demotivate developers and prevent them making their best contribution.
What happens if I really accept that I'm not fungible? I'm not an interchangeable resource filling a seat. The projects don't simply have quotas of seats that need to be filled.
Then I'm a creative person, and this particular workplace is where I currently exercise my creativity. The project would be different if I were not here. And any project I move on to will be different because of me.
So what do I bring? And what do I want to bring?
No comments:
Post a Comment