Debt thinking-a new perspective of software R & D

In software development, what we have done, the code we have written, and the documents we have left are not assets, but debts. -- Debt thinking

 

Production thinking rules the world of Software Development

Debt thinking is a type of disruption, opposite to most people's views on software development. Production thinking has dominated the world of software development for a long time. Software R & D has always been a process of producing code and documents to build workable software. There is no doubt that this is production.

Well, the Declaration is very good. Come to the software production declaration.

Software Production Declaration

Software development is the process of producing code and documents to continuously build workable software. To this end:

Produce correct document softwareHigher than customer value (target debt)

Process Specification contract divisionHigher than communication and collaboration (process debt)

Rating by outputHigher than maintenance reconstruction (result debt)

People are machines, smart peopleHigher than Group Creation (Personnel debt)

Predictable and reproducible production is the key to success. While those on the right are also valuable, the focus is to complete the left part.

Measurement is the basis, output is the goal, and division of labor is the coreThis is a typical production thinking. Under the guidance of this kind of thinking: 1) the output comes from production, so the production of more things will be able to get higher benefits; 2) unmeasurable, unmanageable, follow the SMART principle; 3) goals can be decomposed, measured and managed after decomposition, and the goals after decomposition must comply with the SMART principle; 4) goals are decomposed based on division of labor, the goal of division of labor is to do our jobs well, and optimizing our production efficiency will improve the overall production efficiency. 5) collaboration is simple and is based on the division of labor, determine the collaboration page after division of labor. Follow these steps. 6) follow these steps to make sure that the division of labor is measurable. 7) a person is a machine with certain skills, our goal is to build a training system that gives these machines the skills they need.

 

Production thinking is outdated and not suitable for software development

The times have changed, and social forms have changed from production-driven to consumption-driven. The choice of consumers has become the key to determining earnings. production is no longer the key factor to determining earnings. Producing and selling more things is the rule that many enterprises follow. Apple's chief designer, Ive, once said, "most of our competitors insist on making something different, or at least seem fresh-I think these are all wrong goals. A product must be refined to be even better in the true sense ." Every product of apple is so successful, and many people think that they are revolutionizing their industry. In the same industry, the fate of Samsung and HTC also illustrates this. Samsung, relying on the Galaxy series to become Apple's biggest competitor in terms of smartphones, has brought about a decline in HTC's new generation every day. In the Internet industry, Facebook recently acquired Instagram for only 13 employees for $1 billion, which illustrates the same problem.

The times have changed. In the modern economy, the division of labor is no longer the core, while the movement of Individual Creation towards group creation is a trend. The lack of knowledge and information and the obstacles to human collaboration are the two key points. Welch's success was a miracle of the 20th century. He advocated borderless Management. "in the traditional sense, enterprises rely on strict boundaries to win, and enterprises in the future will win competition by borderless." The amaba philosophy of Kazuo rice divides company organizations into small groups, and each small group is based on the unique business indicators such as "per unit time accounting", and thoroughly pursues the maximization of additional value, this has brought about the continuous success of Kyocera. Under the leadership of Zhang Ruimin, Haier's flexible, single-person, one-on-one self-operating system model leads Haier to be a large group that is dynamic and responds to market demands more quickly. Like this, there is Facebook.

Software R & D is unique, resulting in unavailability of production thinking. legacy systems, expensive process assets, and unattended articles have become a huge obstacle for subsequent R & D. Production can be repeated because the product will not affect subsequent production, but not software development. There is almost no difference between producing the first cup and producing the first 100th cups, but there is a huge difference between developing the first function and developing the 100th function. In software development, everyone tries to add their ideas to the software. On infoq, many recent articles on architecture corruption have clearly pointed out that architecture corruption is not a design issue, but a time issue, these time issues result in debt.

Finally, the most important thing is people. There are too many unknown values about customer values. There are too many unknown questions about how to reduce the lack of knowledge and information and effectively collaborate. There are too many unknowns about the uniqueness of software development-result debt. All of this requires human changes, but it is a big question how people who have been educated, recruited, trained, and assessed by production thinking can adapt to and promote such changes.

The above describes the four major software R & D debts proposed by debt thinking:Target debt, process debt, result debt, and personnel debtTraditional production thinking cannot solve these four problems.

 

Debt thinking-a new perspective of software R & D

Production thinking is outdated, but it still dominates the world of software development. This is the reality we need to face. Changing or being changed is a problem.

Well, the Declaration is very good. Come back to the debt thinking declaration.

Debt thinking Declaration

In software development, what we have done, the code we have written, and the documents we have left are not assets, but debts. To this end:

Customer ValueHigher than software production (target debt)

Communication and collaborationHigher than precise division of labor (process debt)

Debt reductionHigher than encouraging output (result debt)

Group debt repaymentHigher than completion (Personnel debt)

Although the right side is also valuable, the accumulation of debt from the left side will let us taste the bad consequences.

 

Related Links and exploration Trails

From proposing debt management in May to the present, the exploration is full of fun. I have re-learned the basic concepts of debt, management, software engineering, and economy. My thoughts have also evolved from debt management to debt thinking. You can keep yourself on a fixed topic, and the gains always exceed your expectations. Some blog posts record the traces of exploration.

Financial-from house slaves to four songs to debt management http://www.ituring.com.cn/article/1192

Is management an asset? No, management is debt http://www.ituring.com.cn/article/1204

Management is the http://www.ituring.com.cn/article/1258 from assets to liabilities

Management debt of Software Development Co., http://www.ituring.com.cn/article/1774.