DEV Community

Discussion on: The assembly line, code, and Big O.

Collapse
 
jfrankcarr profile image
Frank Carr

Having worked at manufacturing companies, I have to agree with you on this one. The difference will become readily apparent if you have the misfortune to be directly managed by manufacturing oriented engineering management rather than a buffer layer of management "spear catchers" who know software.

In one case, a new operations manager asked why we couldn't just add a second shift of programmers to insure that we meet our project target dates. Others have come up with similar bad ideas.

On the flip side, I had to make them understand how the software development process was different. This often proved a challenge because they want to look at classic project management metrics like "lines of code" and such. Even worse, they think programming a complex web app isn't any different from them recording an Excel macro or doing a calculation and a chart in Matlab.

Collapse
 
codemouse92 profile image
Jason C. McDonald • Edited

If it helps, I developed the Quantified Task Management (QTM) standard specifically to address management's need/desire for realistic programming metrics.