Comments on: Breaking Free of Legacy Projects

By: Ryan Kohn

Ryan Kohn — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:53:13 +0000

“The less people developing a product results in fewer defects.”

I agree with this in itself. But then again, it must have a lower limit on it. A three-person team is probably better than a twelve-person person one (too many cooks?), but is it better than a four-person team?

Philosophizing aside, Johanna makes a valid point about the difficulty of creating maintainable software.

“If a one man team can write a piece of software, he usually is forced to write it better because he can’t just divide it up.”

A piece of software is a living breathing thing, or at least it should be. The point is not that a single person cannot write good code; it’s about what happens to projects when that single person will not maintain the code.

By: Reproducible Ideas » Blog Archive » Medieval project management

Reproducible Ideas » Blog Archive » Medieval project management — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:57:00 +0000

[...] Rothman wrote a response to the medieval project management post in which she gives good advice on how businesses can avoid [...]

By: Jim Ward

Jim Ward — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:06:41 +0000

I can’t agree with Joshua. Not only because one person projects expose the organization, as Johanna points out, but because better work often results from the synergistic effects of two or three person teams, even when one person has all the to get the job done. One person projects are a problem in any organization. When I managed a software development group I inherited many of these projects, several of them legacy projects that never ended, and immediately reorganized to put a stop to them. Result – productivity increased considerably. An additional note, I have never seen data which states that defects are inversely proportional to the size of the development team. In fact, I have seen data on very small projects that says defects per line of code are quite high.

By: Ross Patterson

Ross Patterson — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:30:36 +0000

Every project is a potential future legacy project, and many of them will wind up there. This is why design documentation is important, no matter how much it is out of fashion. Yes, it’s hard to keep documentation up to date. So what? The difference between a cowboy coder and a professional software developer is knowing that there’s more to a project that the code, and that the code is sometimes the easiest part of the project.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 02:25:16 +0000

Although having a team has it’s positives. The less people developing a product results in fewer defects. There should be less defects because there is less collaboration needed. If a one man team can write a piece of software, he usually is forced to write it better because he can’t just divide it up. Basecamp/Rails is a good example.

By: Dwayne Phillips

Dwayne Phillips — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:54:26 +0000

I inherited a legacy project in the early 1990s. The source code was hard to understand and there were no tests. To keep the project from being dependent on one person, I wrote a set of detailed procedures on what we should be doing. Those procedures were gold as the project took on life and grew to a team of a dozen people. Each new person received the procedures and was able to contribute on their second day.

By: The Endeavour » Blog Archive » Medieval software project management

The Endeavour » Blog Archive » Medieval software project management — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:26:02 +0000

[...] Here’s a response from Johanna Rothman about how to avoid medieval project [...]