[LINK] Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

[grove at zeta.org.au]

On Mon, 14 Jan 2008, Janet Hawtin wrote:

> On Jan 14, 2008 8:30 PM, Bernard Robertson-Dunn <brd at iimetro.com.au> wrote:
>
>> Unfortunately, in the early stages of the project, the really
>> experienced system person who can recognise the "first off" nature of
>> the system is usually not part of the team. That's when we get back to
>> the "how do you pick a plumber?" problem.
>
> Could this not be resolved by making the process of defining the
> question open so that the kinds of people who would give you
> interesting responses in that situation would become apparent. That
> way you do not get a plumber you get someone with excellent specific
> knowledge on integrated grey water systems in an on topic context?

Where I work at <some uni>, projects are launched all the time,
with very large meetings of "stakeholders" and "business owners". 
The technical side is often glossed over.   The people least likely 
to be able identify early problems or technical issues are often 
given the leads or commitment to the project.   The people most
able to adapt their skills to the projects are often ignored
or told "that's a technical issue we'll come to later" and the ideas
or recommendations are rarely taken on board.   Most of the projects
are eventually successful, but only after overrunning stupid deadlines.

Most of these projects  are in fact small in nature, in that a 
reasonably skilled admin or programmer 
could do them in a few afternoons and then
do a handover.  But instead things like a set of php web forms, 
a Remedy installation or the deployment of a CMS become major 
tasks, with up to 6 or 7 people involved at various levels.

Then there the projects which are mostly outsourced.  These seem to 
take much longer than they should and signoff often means ignoring 
sysadmins who want peer review of installations and so on.

Also there are situations where competing products are installed 
and deployed, Moodle where a small fortune has already been spent
on WebCT, Sharepoint (which eats about 6 staff) vs Wiki and CMS
and an endless stream of vendors finger pointing that the Cisco 
switch we were sold yesterday, doesn't comply with EMC's SAN 
and Sun's Solaris although a product matrix says it should.

Somehow, all these things are overcome and a project emerges to
completion, running on a hugely overspecced computer with the OS
dumbed down to meet user's expectations and please don't blame 
IE6 if SSL doesn't work - it must be apache's fault....


rachel

-- 
Rachel Polanskis                 Kingswood, Greater Western Sydney, Australia
grove at zeta.org.au                http://www.zeta.org.au/~grove/grove.html
 		The price of greatness is responsibility.