Chapter 5. Mapping the Manufacturing Process

Software engineering and project management share many parallels, but nothing stands out as clearly as how to integrate the activities of numerous teams or individuals or projects and still deliver a consistent product. Developing software is a complex world of ever-changing requirements and fine-tuning code—and so you'd think more time would be spent ensuring the system has been designed efficiently. In a perfect world, each effort would leverage key learnings from past projects, combine the skills and critical input from the vast array of cross-functional team members, and act as a template for future projects. Oh, that we lived in a perfect world . . . .

More than likely the scenario goes something like this: A requirement from Customer X that has been lingering in the system for a couple of months gets reassigned to you, and suddenly some VP decides that Customer X's request is critical. The request is marked urgent, made your main priority, and sent to the top of the management team's daily status report. Not the kind of attention you want from management. So you quickly craft a solution, move it through the test queue, and shake the dust off your shoes. You've just thrown your code “over the wall.”