Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
that computer programming was a uniquely creative activity—genuine
“'brain business,' often an agonizingly diffi cult intellectual effort”—and
therefore almost impossible to manage using conventional methods.
29
But by the end of the decade, the same journals that had previously
considered programming unmanageable were fi lled with exhortations
toward better software development management: “Controlling
Computer Programming”;
New Power for Management;
“Managing the
Programming Effort”; and
The Management of Computer Programming
Efforts
.
30
The same qualities that had previously been seen as essential
indicators of programming ability, such as creativity and a mild degree
of personal eccentricity, now began to be perceived as merely unprofes-
sional. As part of their rhetorical construction of the applications crisis
as a crisis of programmer management, corporate managers accused
programmers of lacking professional standards and loyalties: “too fre-
quently these people [programmers], while exhibiting excellent technical
skills, are non-professional in every other aspect of their work.”
31
A
widely quoted psychological study that identifi ed as a “striking charac-
teristic of programmers . . . their disinterest in people,” reinforced the
managers' contention that programmers were insuffi ciently concerned
with the larger interests of the company.
32
Computer specialists were
increasingly cast as self-interested peddlers of whizbang technologies. “In
all too many cases the data processing technician does not really under-
stand the problems of management and is merely looking for the applica-
tion of his specialty,” wrote William Walker in a letter to the editor in
the management-oriented journal
Business Automation
.
33
Calling pro-
grammers the “Cosa Nostra” of the industry, the colorful former-
programmer-turned-technology-management-consultant Herbert Grosch
declared that computer specialists “are at once the most unmanageable
and the most poorly managed specialism in our society. Actors and
artists pale by comparison. Only pure mathematicians are as cantanker-
ous, and it's a calamity that so many of them get recruited by simplistic
personnel men.” He warned managers to “refuse to embark on grandiose
or unworthy schemes, and refuse to let their recalcitrant charges waste
skill, time and money on the fashionable idiocies of our [computer]
racket.”
34
The most obvious explanation for the sudden reversal in management
attitudes toward computer people is that just as corporate investment in
computing assets escalated rapidly in this period, so did its economic
interest in managing these assets effectively. And since the costs of
computer software, broadly defi ned to include people, planning, and
