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From: kurtl@fai.UUCP (Kurt Luoto)
Newsgroups: comp.sw.components
Subject: Re: Schedule and budget are secondary
Message-ID: <2549@fai.UUCP>
Date: 16 Oct 89 19:59:30 GMT
References: <16168@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> <6693@hubcap.clemson.edu> <3807@rtech.rtech.com> <16202@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> <7402@xenna.Xylogics.COM>
Reply-To: kurtl@fai.fai.com (Kurt Luoto)
Organization: Fujitsu America, Inc
Lines: 36

In article <7402@xenna.Xylogics.COM> barnes@Xylogics.COM (Jim Barnes) writes:
>In article <16202@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes:

[ Some stuff deleted regarding assignment of personnel
  to maintenance programming ... ]

>>We need to get development and maintenance to equal prestige.  There are
>>people who LIKE to work on existing code, shaping it to new needs.  
>
>I agree, but it seems that it is very hard to find these people.  Maybe
>the truly good maintenance programmers do not change jobs very often.
>
>----
>  Jim Barnes (barnes@Xylogics.COM)

I agree that finding people to stay with a project long-term is often
difficult.  I certainly don't have any easy solutions.
However, I think that we help continue the problem and the mindset that
gives rise to it by refering to "development programming" and "maintenance
programming" as if they were somehow very different things.
In my humble experience, there really is no difference.
The cuttoff point for the "maintenance" phase of a product's life cycle is
completely arbitrary.  I don't change the way I program based on whether
the product has had a first release or not.  Certainly I have some different
problems when having to use or modify code that another person wrote
as opposed to code that I wrote myself, but I have dealt with that situation
even in the "development" phase.  Ever had a team member leave the company
in the middle of development?  I think a company can take a small step
towards resolution by officially not recognizing such an arbitrary
distinction between development and maintenance phases of a project.

I know that I'm not the first to voice the opinion,
but can't find the references at the moment.  Cheers.

-------
Kurt W. Luoto          kurtl@fai.fai.com  or  ...!sun!fai!kurtl