building a pyramid, starting at the top is one of those things
that just doesn't scale.
For that, you have "bottom-up," right? But there's no "meet-in-the-middle"
for a pyramid, or for software. Unless, the big picture is small enough to
fit in one man's head and let him "context-switch" back and forth between
general and particular, in which case you have to give up expanding
software functionality at the one man barrier.
All admirable architecture, and admirable software, is, in addition to
being manifestation of great technique, manifestation of great
management--even informal management is management in the end. Instead of
"it all begins with Adam and Steve," as Brian Stuart suggests, ways have
been found of managing large teams of people with different specializations
and those ways work. The Mgmt has a raison d'etre, despite what
techno-people like to suggest.
--On Friday, December 26, 2008 5:30 PM -0500 erik quanstrom
<quans...@quanstro.net> wrote:
Know why Mel is no more in business? 'Cause one man can only do so much
work. The Empire State took many men to build, so did Khufu's pyramid,
and there was no whining about "many mechanisms that don't work well
together." Now go call your managers "PHBs."
building a pyramid, starting at the top is one of those things
that just doesn't scale.
- erik
