The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

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 …

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[The future's so bright, I gotta wear shades]

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