In my interactions with various personnel working in the IT world I have noticed that some people have the tendency to use the word "factory" to describe location where people are either writing new applications or are maintaining existing software. Something in the word "factory" raises an irritation in me. I do not get a comfortable feeling when somebody equates to software development/maintenance to the tasks performed in a factory.
What, I think, these people fail to realize or admit is that in factory the tasks tend to be repetitive and hence "teachable" and "learnable". This is the reason why we see so much automation in all the factories, they hardly have any human intervention.
Unlike the manufacturing factories the software "factory" is full of people. Except for very few processes in the development cycle, software creation cannot be automated. Human intervention is required at almost every stage. Software requires human touch during creation.
From a maintenance and support perspective too software needs humans to address any issues that come up in the production. Very little of this can be automated.
Given these it gives me creeps if somebody refers to "software factory".
What, I think, these people fail to realize or admit is that in factory the tasks tend to be repetitive and hence "teachable" and "learnable". This is the reason why we see so much automation in all the factories, they hardly have any human intervention.
Unlike the manufacturing factories the software "factory" is full of people. Except for very few processes in the development cycle, software creation cannot be automated. Human intervention is required at almost every stage. Software requires human touch during creation.
From a maintenance and support perspective too software needs humans to address any issues that come up in the production. Very little of this can be automated.
Given these it gives me creeps if somebody refers to "software factory".
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