Pin Factory Revisted

A while back I had posted about software work and the pin factory. As that post makes out, I am no admirer of specialization.
  
Yesterday I finished reading "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". The sub-title of the book is An Inquiry into Values (Note: Italics and underline are mine). The edition is the Twenty-fifth Anniversary Edition.

Quote from the book:

"Arete implies a respect for the wholeness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency - or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an efficiency which exists not in one department of life but in life itself."

In an earlier paragraph the author, quoting Kitto, an authority on ancient Greece, says  arete to the ancient Greeks simply meant excellence.

PS: Prof. Prisig could just as well be talking of software instead of Motorcycles. I hope to post more on the subject - and the book.

Specialization and the Software Practicioner.

What of the perspective of the individual practioner? Should he become a specialist? I believe sticking with a specialization would be career threatening. I believe the key skill is to be able to quickly become a competent practioner, in any of the skills required for the software life cycle. That is also what good team work is about.

Software Companies and the Pin Factory

A person I have met on a few occasions, is a believer in specialization. He gives the example of Adam Smith's pin factory. (On all occasions it was to convince people to stick to testing).

I confess to being suspicious of specialists.

Should a software company -especially a start-up, or a small company - be run like a pin factory?

My perspective is that of 10~150 person software company. Not of an Infosys or a Microsoft. I do not know those worlds.

The pin factory method of organizing work came true in the assembly lines of the 20th century. The dehumanizing aspect of such work was potrayed in the classic film Modern Times, starring Charlie Chaplin. The justification of the pin factory model is that it is efficient and thus leads to higher higher production. That is true for mass production where tasks are repetitive. The human operator is first exxpected to become an automaton. Then the worker is replaced by an automaton.

But is software development, or maintenance, mass production? Can software tasks be done in a mechanical way with minimal engagement of the persons mind? There are such tasks like doing builds and running tests and they should be automated through scripts. But that does not mean that testing should be treated as a specialization.

Personally I think that a software company should be organized and run as described in A Company of Citizens: What the World's First Democracy Teaches Leaders About Creating Great Organizations. One of the authors, Brook Manville, was the Chief Learning Officer at Saba Software.

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