Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
a craft for a long-haired programming priesthood to becoming a real
engineering discipline. It was the transformation from an art to a
science.”
6
The call to integrate “good engineering principles” into the
software development process has been the rallying cry of software
developers from the late 1960s to the present.
7
The fundamental problem with software, according to the NATO
conference organizers, was not personnel or technology but rather tech-
nique. Software development was diffi cult because computer program-
mers had failed to follow an appropriate methodology. They persisted
in their craft-based mentality when what was demanded was clearly an
industrial system of manufacturing. “We undoubtedly produce software
by backward techniques, argued M. Douglas McIlroy of Bell Telephone
Laboratories: “We undoubtedly get the short end of the stick in confron-
tations with hardware people because they are the industrialists and we
are the crofters.”
8
Like many of his fellow participants, McIlroy rejected
the notion that large software projects were inherently unmanageable.
The imposition of engineering management methods had enabled effi -
cient manufacturing in myriad other industries, and would not fail to do
the same for computer programming. Software engineering promised to
bring control and predictability to the traditionally undisciplined prac-
tices of software development.
For a number of conference participants, the key word in the provoca-
tive NATO manifesto was “discipline.” For example, in his widely
quoted paper on “mass-produced software components,” McIlroy pro-
posed applying mass-production techniques to software.
9
His vision of
a software “components factory” invokes familiar images of industrial-
ization and proletariatization. According to his proposal, an elite corps
of “software engineers” would serve as the Frederick Taylors of the
software industry, carefully orchestrating every action of a highly
stratifi ed programmer labor force. And like the engineers in more tradi-
tional manufacturing organizations, these software engineers would
identify themselves more as corporate citizens than as independent
professionals.
10
Not every proposed solution to the software crisis suggested at
Garmisch was as blatantly management oriented as McIlroy's.
Nevertheless, the theme of transformation from a craft-based black art
of programming to the industrial discipline of software engineering dom-
inated many of the presentations and discussions. The focus on manage-
ment solutions refl ected—and reinforced—a larger groundswell of
popular opinion that extended far beyond the confi nes of the actual
