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One of the deadly sins of management is treating software engineers as factory workers. Toyota ships same cars over and over. You can't copy the output of a fa

by hbrn 4y ago

One of the deadly sins of management is treating software engineers as factory workers. Toyota ships same cars over and over. You can't copy the output of a factory worker, but you can copy the output of a software engineer. Even if you ship CRUDs all day long, it's still very different from a factory worker.

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
And one of the deadly sins of software development is pretending that we can't learn new things from other industries.
- avmich 4y ago
  For this specific context, disagree.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
    OK. I'd say that it depends on what is meant by "treating software engineers as factory workers." Elsewhere in the thread I reference Team Software Process (TSP) which is a development methodology that uses feedback to continuously improve the development process in a way that's very similar to manufacturing methods. I've done it; it works.
    - hbrn 4y ago
      This is a strawman argument, nobody here advocates against feedback. And using feedback to improve process is not specific to any industry. You don't need to learn from Toyota to understand that feedback is valuable.
0xbadcafebee 4y ago
> Toyota ships same cars over and over. Well, no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model. They are always fixing bugs in the active production line, working on new features, and every year ship new "major and minor versions" of each model. Toyota USA ships these models: Corolla, Camry, Avalon, Mirai, GR86, Supra, Sienna, Tacoma, Tundra, Sequoia, Highlander, Venza, C-HR, RAV4, Corolla Cross, 4Runner, bZ4X. For each of those there are 2-6 different trims. Assuming an average of 4 trims, that is 2,380 different configurations of vehicles. Each trim can also have optional components added or removed to customize each vehicle, increasing combinations further. A US Toyota factory worker may support tens of thousands of ways to assemble a car, and those ways change every day. > Even if you ship CRUDs all day long, it's still very different from a factory worker. Sure, but even a factory worker is different from a factory worker. The demands are different, the customers, compliance, tolerances. You can't treat them all the same. But some basic principles of managing companies, people, work, etc, can be applied to all of them. Waste is bad. Quality is good. Stopping to fix something once is better than stopping to fix it 20 times. The impact of a factory issue is often much greater, more expensive, and harder to fix, than that of a software issue. But software workers can learn a lot about quality and efficiency from how well-run factories are managed. That idea gave birth to Lean Software Development (a subset of Agile).
- invalidOrTaken 4y ago
  >Well, no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model. Do these refinements face process gates though? Because that's a better mapping to software. And perhaps they do---but I highly doubt it's as many as the cars themselves face.
- hbrn 4y ago
  > no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model Do you really believe what I meant is that Toyota ships one model, "The Toyota"? > They are always fixing bugs in the active production line, working on new features And people who do that are typically not described as "factory workers". > Sure, but even a factory worker is different from a factory worker They are the same in a sense that you can usually add more workers when you need to ship faster. Fred Brooks wrote a book explaining why the same mindset doesn't work in software.

by hbrn 4y ago

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago

And one of the deadly sins of software development is pretending that we can't learn new things from other industries.

avmich 4y ago
For this specific context, disagree.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  OK. I'd say that it depends on what is meant by "treating software engineers as factory workers." Elsewhere in the thread I reference Team Software Process (TSP) which is a development methodology that uses feedback to continuously improve the development process in a way that's very similar to manufacturing methods. I've done it; it works.
  - hbrn 4y ago
    This is a strawman argument, nobody here advocates against feedback. And using feedback to improve process is not specific to any industry. You don't need to learn from Toyota to understand that feedback is valuable.

0xbadcafebee 4y ago

> Toyota ships same cars over and over. Well, no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model. They are always fixing bugs in the active production line, working on new features, and every year ship new "major and minor versions" of each model. Toyota USA ships these models: Corolla, Camry, Avalon, Mirai, GR86, Supra, Sienna, Tacoma, Tundra, Sequoia, Highlander, Venza, C-HR, RAV4, Corolla Cross, 4Runner, bZ4X. For each of those there are 2-6 different trims. Assuming an average of 4 trims, that is 2,380 different configurations of vehicles. Each trim can also have optional components added or removed to customize each vehicle, increasing combinations further. A US Toyota factory worker may support tens of thousands of ways to assemble a car, and those ways change every day. > Even if you ship CRUDs all day long, it's still very different from a factory worker. Sure, but even a factory worker is different from a factory worker. The demands are different, the customers, compliance, tolerances. You can't treat them all the same. But some basic principles of managing companies, people, work, etc, can be applied to all of them. Waste is bad. Quality is good. Stopping to fix something once is better than stopping to fix it 20 times. The impact of a factory issue is often much greater, more expensive, and harder to fix, than that of a software issue. But software workers can learn a lot about quality and efficiency from how well-run factories are managed. That idea gave birth to Lean Software Development (a subset of Agile).

invalidOrTaken 4y ago
>Well, no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model. Do these refinements face process gates though? Because that's a better mapping to software. And perhaps they do---but I highly doubt it's as many as the cars themselves face.
hbrn 4y ago
> no, they don't, and this is the point: they are constantly refining every car model Do you really believe what I meant is that Toyota ships one model, "The Toyota"? > They are always fixing bugs in the active production line, working on new features And people who do that are typically not described as "factory workers". > Sure, but even a factory worker is different from a factory worker They are the same in a sense that you can usually add more workers when you need to ship faster. Fred Brooks wrote a book explaining why the same mindset doesn't work in software.