After my last post, Brent Ozar offered the following suggestion on kickstarting my thoughts on “People First”
” Come up with the one true sentence, and the inspiration flows out of that. Sometimes you hang the entire post on that one sentence, and sometimes the sentence just ends up slipped in somewhere almost as an aside. “
I mulled over it over the weekend (in between basketball games, date nights, and family technical support), and below is the best I could come up with. I think it’s a useful exercise, and I’m going to focus my energy today on expanding this thought:
The primary purpose of software development is to add value to humanity; however, most software development processes dehumanize the creators.
More to come. And, thanks, Brent! I owe you yet another beer.
Ooo, really interesting. Or to try to boil it down a little:
Well-built software adds value to the lives of both the users and the creators.
I think that’s a little harsh, and I like Brent’s idea that is a little more positive.
I wouldn’t agree that most software dev processes dehumanize the creators, but I do think that the way people manage developers do dehumanize them.
I’d also say DevOps is a set of principles that seeks to produce better software and better software developers.
It’s not just managers, though; it’s peers in the process. And I agree, DevOps is all about producing better software and better people. I think all people involved in software delivery ARE developers, but operations folks often struggle with that, so I’m leaving that alone for a bit.
More to come.