Good post on productivity improvement for software developers. Processes and work practices can always be improved! -Ralph
Developers and managers alike often laugh at the suggestion that 4 fold improvements in programmer productivity are possible with changes in working practices. Numbers like 10 fold seem like fantasy. Most people I speak to think I'm crazy when I tell them that I believe that 40 fold improvements will be possible within 15 years and that history will look back on the first 40 years for software engineering as a craft era.
There is a split opinion on the usefulness of history. Henry Ford declared that it was "Bunk!" Whilst we are often reminded that "those who do not learn the lessons from history are condemned to repeat it". For those of you who align with that second sentiment then you may enjoy this article, A Great Yarn from The Economist Christmas Special.
The article charts the history of cotton. What has that got to do with software development? In my opinion - a lot! Why?
The industrial revolution has a lot in common with the information revolution through which we are living. Landed gentry farmers from England used their wealth to expand into plantations in the colonies. This meant running banana, sugar and cotton plantations in the Americas staffed by slaves from Africa. The raw material was brought back to England for added-value processing and then sold throughout the rapidly expanding British Empire.
Processes like spinning cotton were the high technology of their day. Investment banking was basically invented during his period to facilitate the flow of capital from the gentry farmers with raw material wealth to those with ideas for spinning jennies and steam engines and locomotive power and steam powered looms and so on and so on. It was the venture capital industry of its day. A virtuous cycle was started where wealthy people invested in new ideas which generated yet more wealth. The Economist does a good job of explaining this for cotton - a key element in the industrial revolution and the creation (eventually) of untold new wealth and higher standards of living for all.
Note how closely the now unfashionable use of imported slave labor reflects the use today of the H1B and (even more so) L1 Visa in Silicon Valley. Rapid expansion fueled by new technology creates labor shortages. Migrant workers fill that demand.
The most important details in this article for me are the statistics. Over a 70 year period cotton production got 200 times better. Not only did this not destroy jobs but instead it created yet greater demand for the product and generated yet more wealth.
I firmly believe that a confluence of two things - management science and knowledge of best working practices, together with improved tools - is creating the beginnings of the "spinning jenny effect" for software development. OMG's MDA or Steve Mellor's "executable UML" or OASIS ebXML or BPM may not be the right tools but they are going the right way. Combine the right answer in tools with the knowledge we are gaining about agile software engineering and it's a sure thing that we are on the verge of a paradigm shifting change for the better. The craft era is ending and 70 years from now an article in The Economist Christmas Special will look back at the changes in software and knowledge work and reflect that there has been a huge improvement in productivity (of at least 40 fold).
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