Eric,
I am fascinated by your analogy between software development and car
manufacturing. I was wondering what sort of software house you had in mind
(e.g. no. of staff, size of project, no. of projects per year, type of
program (e.g. embedded, commercial, standard or customised application,
in-house corporate development or independent producer, for industrial
control, office automation, games, artifical intelligence etc.)) Do your
comments apply to all situations, or are you considering only particular
conditions?
Many thanks
Gray Southon
> 1. The production of the automobile and many other high quality consumer
>goods started out the way software did. A lone inventor (programmer)
>assembled the automobile (program) in his workshop (garage, bedroom,
>university computer center etc.). Yet no one today would dream of
>attempting to produce a car from scratch in his or her garage. This is die
>to the fact that the "production process has matured to the point that a
>well defined high quality production process exists, which allows input
>from many many different individuals (production line workers) without
>sacrificing the quality of the end product. That is to say that the
>software production process can be defined well enough that a high quality
>product can be produced.
>
Snip
> You see very quickly the analogy to a standard industrial production
>process only that we have been producting industrial products and managing
>the production process for nearly a century - not so for software, but
>there is no reason not to.
>
> Eric N. Opp
>
> MRJ Inc.
> eopp@mrj.com
-- Gray Southon Consultant in Health Management Research and Analsysis 15 Parthenia St., Caringbah, NSW 2229, Australia Ph/Fax +61 2 524 7822 em gsouthon@ozemail.com.au