In response to my editorial from 6/18 on Self Determined Projects Dilip writes:
To the best of my knowledge, many of us have been following this approach for years.
I had a developer with a commerce background who wanted to work on an engineering related project of stress and strain analysis in bridge construction. He did wonders. He not only completed this project above anybody’s expectation but it also helped him to take not so pleasant projects (call them boring) with the same zeal and give them a new dimension.
The Following things need to be kept in mind:
- Every project is not for Profit.
- The development through learning and such kind of self-motivated training are not a cost to the company but should be looked upon as an asset building process.
- It adds versatility to the approach in development as intelligence is not anybody’s monopoly.
- Further, the developers can be moved easily from one project to another.
- In reality, we found that the overall cost does not go up but comes down as development is faster.
- The amount of reading that is done by such developers is mind boggling (who otherwise read only just-in-need type of reading).
- It is relatively easy to get programmers but it is not so easy to get good System Analysts. But, such motivated developers really became a good analyst and that was worth the job.
I’m surprised that the resulting output for the company based work is considered so much more valuable. These are the kinds of things like in Agile programming that are sometimes hard to measure or compare. How do you substantiate the assertion that a developer is producing more or better code? Does a company really get more value for the project time? How closely to the self directed projects need to align with the primary purpose of the company? Leave your feedback here or drop an email to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben