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Letter to Software Managers

Thursday, December 07, 2006 11:47 AM

Handshake The always excellent Software by Rob blog has a fun "Open Letter to the Software Managers of the World". Nothing too terribly ground breaking here, but I do enjoy the format: A list of things software developers agree to -

We will do what it takes to get the job done without being asked, including working extra hours (as long as it does not violate clause 1 in the section below).

We will not complain when we are assigned boring tasks, bad problems, or have to maintain someone else's code (as long as it does not violate clauses 4 or 5 in the section below).

and a list of things that software managers agree to

You understand that "crunch time" is an unexpected part of software development. Unless we have substantial equity in the company, crunch time will not exceed 3 weeks during any 6 month period.

You will ensure that at least 80% of our time is spent on good problems.

If you plan to call us when software breaks, we will be given time to refactor and stabilize it as needed.

I fear that the problem with this and others like it, is that the WRONG PEOPLE read these. I wonder if my manager even knows what a blog is. It's easy for me and my developer buddies to sit around and complain about stuff like this, but what's more difficult is ACTUALLY GETTING THESE POINTS ACROSS. Heck, most software development teams can't even be bothered to do a Project Postmortem, so why would they change these?

I'd love to hear from someone who actually mails this to their manager. Maybe this guy would.

Comments

Software Manager 12/7/2006 2:55:40 PM
I am one of those "software managers". Rob's blog post caught my eye first thing this morning. His blog is one of my favorites, and I like this post in particular. Meeting all of the proposed conditions all of the time without fail is not humanly possible (for either side), but we should try, and continue trying. So here sits a software manager getting ready to email this to his development team.
Dusty 12/7/2006 3:27:59 PM
Software Manager,

Kudos for emailing this to your dev team. I think the beauty in this post is that it demonstrates that it's a give and take between BOTH SIDES. Of course trying is all we can do. The first step however, is recognizing the NEED to address issues like these. If both sides don't agree on the need to continually TRY to improve process, then we're stuck.
Jimbob 12/8/2006 2:23:43 AM
Thanks for the link back.

My opinion on this? Great stuff!

But your right about getting it across to the right people.

However, once you find a means of doing so, as I did with digg.com, you will find it’s not hard for it to take off. I believe the majority of people in most countries of the world answer ‘work’ when asked what they hate the most (I certainly know its true for America).

My Boss read my post, so did her superiors and I understand it was mailed around hundreds of businesses in the UK.

Businesses rely on their mainstream employees more than they sometimes give them credit for. They often don’t like to admit it, but without them, things would go downhill fast.

Any form of bringing awareness to employees or simply raising moral is a good thing in my book.


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