michaelo@teklds.TEK.COM (Michael O'Hair) (05/03/88)
This has less to do with Sofware Engineering than it does project management, but read on if you like: After surviving several real disasters, I'm of the opinion that a "Boswell" should be assigned to every "major" project. However, my vision of a historian's role is to gather data for use by management in preparing for future projects. After a project is completed, successful or not, the "project history" is collated and presented to management, who will, hopefully, read it and learn what went right and what went wrong. The danger is that the historian can become viewed as a spy. It would be possible to do the data gathering as an "oral history" with anonymity guaranteed to those who desire it. The interviewers would have to be trained at investigative techniques (journalism, not police) to be able to filter out, or at least earmark, self-serving statements, ad hominem attacks, and the like. Ideally, each team would do their own history and list what they did wrong and what they did right, giving opinions/reasons for each. It would take very secure people, however, to be able to write down "We made a bad choice in personnel/algorithm/hardware/etc and here's what it cost." The bright side would be to be able to say "We looked at the problem carefully, came up with approach XYZ and reduced the time to market by 10%." That's my two cents worth. Michael J. O'Hair Design Test Integration Division Tektronix, Inc. Disclaimer: "It's not my fault."
janssen@titan.SW.MCC.COM (Bill Janssen) (05/06/88)
In article <3058@teklds.TEK.COM>, michaelo@teklds.TEK.COM (Michael O'Hair) writes: > ... After a project is > completed, successful or not, the "project history" [should be] collated > and presented to management, who will, hopefully, read it and learn > what went right and what went wrong. Seems to me that that attitude right there, of hopeful historians presenting something to "management", who may or may not read it, is its own problem. This will only work if you have management *pulling* for those results, asking for the data, eager to see how they can do better. Bill