Re: [tlug] Giving a program priority briefly

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On Thu, 14 Jun 2007, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:

> Hell, you could claim it's already scaled to many thousand, simply by
> listing all SF projects with one developer.

No. Those have scaled to "one". I'm talking about a single project.

> The question is, have you scaled it in a project with complex
> dependencies among more than 5 programmers' areas of responsibilities?

Yes. Because every area is every programmer's area of responsibility.

"No code ownership" is surprisingly important. Although, come to think
of it, for all these little XP koans, I could probably come up with a
bunch of things you also need just to approach these. For example, for
"no code ownership," it's going to break unless you also go in with,
"assume that, if it looks stupid, it's subtle," and first go find the
guy who did it, and find out why he did it.

XP is no substitute for communication, or at least asking why.

> However, there are a lot of tasks that it's simply not suited to in my
> opinion (eg, maintaining an Emacs or a kernel)....

Well, hmmm, tell that to a project which for the purposes of this post,
I'll just call "L". They use a lot less process than this.

> and thus I object to the universal quantifiers...

Yeah, I'll agree with that one.

> It hasn't happened yet. Just because the lkml doesn't look like a
> SEI-certified CMM Level 5 shop doesn't mean that Linux doesn't have
> a superb group of project managers, top-notch engineers that anybody
> would be happy to have....

I can think of a lot of managers that not only would not be happy to
have that group, but would entirely freak if you even proposed it to
them.

cjs
--
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
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