Part 5: What to Do on Monday Morning

What can we take from software craftsmanship to improve the way that we deliver software right now? Of course, by asking that question, I am asking for a quick-fix solution that is in many ways incompatible with the ideas of craftsmanship, but practical action has always been the hallmark of a craftsman. To make a lasting improvement to the practice of software development, we need to address the systemic problem: Collectively we have been trying to tackle developing small applications the same way that we handle massive software engineering projects.

The final three chapters of this book address both the quick-fix and longer-term questions by covering three key topics: selecting developers for a project, establishing suitable design goals for application development, and empowering developers to become better at their craft. Each chapter begins with ideas that provide quick fixes that can have an immediate, beneficial impact on small application development projects. As each chapter progresses, the ideas presented may take longer to apply, but the potential impact and benefit from applying each idea is much greater. Toward the end of each chapter you might find that the ideas presented seem visionary and impractical; that will mean that I have achieved my goal of being deliberately provocative in introducing software craftsmanship.

Most of the ideas presented are personal-social in nature, as the real issues lie in that realm. Software engineering has given us good technical tools, but now the people side needs to be addressed to improve the effectiveness of software development.

With software craftsmanship, the intention is to get the best possible tools into the hands of capable developers so that small teams can create applications that once required the services of lots of people. Instead of accepting the software engineering challenge of finding 200,000 more developers, craftsmanship challenges us to find and empower 20,000 really good developers. It is not that we need to find more people. Rather, the real challenge is to make the developers we already have become much more effective. That is the real challenge for Monday morning—adopting software development practices that empower small teams to do really great work.