The Way Out of the Software Crisis
Peter Middleton, James Sutton · Productivity Press eBooks · 2020
People who have labored to produce software in chaotic development environments appreciate anything that brings more order and predictability to their work. Just as early twentieth-century mass production improved upon nineteenth-century craft production, post-craft software approaches like library reuse, the Capability Maturity Model, and Extreme Programming have decreased the worries of software managers and made life less stressful for many developers. The software crisis has become so severe and so harmful to our national interests that it is receiving the direct attention of the highest office in the land. Software, the linchpin of so many complex products, is being produced with exquisite technological sophistication on an obsolete foundation of mass production at best, and craft production at worst. Many existing software techniques and technologies are perfectly suitable for lean production. The challenge is for us to overcome our industry’s maverick culture and its natural resistance to paradigm change, and use lean principles to create a better software-production lifecycle.