Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Great! Future civilizations will come to the conclusion that Woody Woodpecker destroyed ours.
“What are you doing here?” they asked.
They were construction foremen, superintendents and project managers attending a course in construction planning from the Lean Construction Institute (LCI). Indeed, what was I doing there?
I started to explain: “In software development, we are told we should manage our projects like construction projects, where a building is designed at the start, cost and schedule are predictable, and customers get what they expect.”
Silence. “You're kidding, right?” “No, honest, that's what we're told.”
Incredulity turns to laughter. The idea that programmers would want to manage projects like the construction industry strikes my classmates as ludicrous.
Via Flutterby, Lean Construction
There's an old programming joke: “If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.” It sounds like it may not be that much of a joke any more …
“Michelin—Tastes so good cats ask for it by name.”
Mark just sent me a link to Logomotto, a silly page that mixes a randomly selected logo with a randomly selected motto (just now I got the Homeland Security logo with the motto “Can you hear me now?”).
