There is an age old principle of fungibility of resources that is essentially saying that you can replace anything with anything else. In a broad sense, when we're agreeing with the theory of fungibility, it's somewhat true that we, as a human being, are proven to be fungible in this world or in a narrow perspective, human beings are being recycled for millions of years. But when it comes to field of Software Engineering or , in general, Knowledge based economy, I can't agree with that principle of fungibility of IT people.
Take an example of digging the earth to cut a pond or carrying a heavy load, and for which I can clearly envision how the people are fungible. You can replace person X with person Y and immediately the person Y can start being productive when the energy level and some other primitive qualities. But what happen when a software engineer is to be fungible in a project of developing a software? Can we truly replace the person X with person Y, considering that all the necessary technologies and necessary skills are close match. Here comes the ingenuity of software development or knowledge based work where the skills aren't not only in consideration but Subject Matter Expertise (SME) plays a big factor to be equally productive when replaced. There's an agreed characteristic of a software programmer is that the programmer actually compiles and executes the entire codebase in his/her head while developing any application. Here I'm kind of saying that subject matter expertise is about loading a software code in the progammer's head and then executing the business cases of that software against it which you can't replace overnight. More over it's not even known how the thinking process works in our brain completely and even though some of which is known but aren't transferrable to another brain. It becomes more complex when the role of software designer comes into play. Even though we develop design documents and all sorts of artifacts, they're not truly the reflection of the thought or knowledge of that software designer but that's only a communicable part of the software design that is, to my believe, not more than 30 to 40 percent of the software design's knowledge and when another person picks them up from that software artifacts they loose some of it because of preconception, ability and other neuro-psychological factors.
Take an example of digging the earth to cut a pond or carrying a heavy load, and for which I can clearly envision how the people are fungible. You can replace person X with person Y and immediately the person Y can start being productive when the energy level and some other primitive qualities. But what happen when a software engineer is to be fungible in a project of developing a software? Can we truly replace the person X with person Y, considering that all the necessary technologies and necessary skills are close match. Here comes the ingenuity of software development or knowledge based work where the skills aren't not only in consideration but Subject Matter Expertise (SME) plays a big factor to be equally productive when replaced. There's an agreed characteristic of a software programmer is that the programmer actually compiles and executes the entire codebase in his/her head while developing any application. Here I'm kind of saying that subject matter expertise is about loading a software code in the progammer's head and then executing the business cases of that software against it which you can't replace overnight. More over it's not even known how the thinking process works in our brain completely and even though some of which is known but aren't transferrable to another brain. It becomes more complex when the role of software designer comes into play. Even though we develop design documents and all sorts of artifacts, they're not truly the reflection of the thought or knowledge of that software designer but that's only a communicable part of the software design that is, to my believe, not more than 30 to 40 percent of the software design's knowledge and when another person picks them up from that software artifacts they loose some of it because of preconception, ability and other neuro-psychological factors.
No comments:
Post a Comment