posted on Monday, October 17, 2005 9:21 PM
by
chrisdonnan
1st Day at Finetix
Well, today was my 1st day at 'the new gig'; Finetix. While
not too much went on, I will say that it was interesting nonetheless.
One of the main things that attracted me to Finetix is that they seem to
basically try to only get technically 'heavy hitters'. That is exactly
the modus operandi that I had for years. It is certainly possible to 'throw' 40
mediocre developers at a project - then get 20 or so middle managers,
follow-uppers and other 'helpers' to make the project close. This is of course
unfortunate for many reasons. You get mediocre, hard to maintain software, lots
of mediocre documentation and the whole deal is well... mediocre. IF however,
you are able to just get the 'heavy hitters' to work on your projects, you can
reduce the head count needed (you will of course pay more for better
developers) and you will get good, maintainable software out of it - with a
better chance of getting it delivered in a timely fashion.
Some organizations opt for the former, some the latter. My belief is that you
just want to be able to have software that you can maintain, understand and
that someone was proud of.It tends to follow that your cream of the crop
developers actually care about their work. They take ownership and pride of and
in their projects, teams and this is what makes 200% of the difference.
We did have some interesting discussion today about how to present agile
methods to your classic CMM level gozillion organization. Many organizations
have been doing business as they have for eons - and old habits die hard. Old
habits die hard even when the new habit could actually offer compelling bottom
line benefits. In any case, it is imperative that tech companies are able to
effectively portray the value of agile development mechanisms. The ability to
deliver in a measured, more quantifiable way is important and a key selling
point in my mind. The ability to manage the overall risk of a project by having
frequent deliverables that you can see and touch is also key. It seems that it
is just a question of presenting the benefits in a way that is comprehensible
to the business at hand.
Anyhow - wife is out of the shower - I am off to real human interaction.
-CD