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The success of the project would no longer hinge on the presence of
any one particular individual. In an era in which the performance of
programmers was believed to vary dramatically from programmer to
programmer, and when turnover in the software industry averaged
upward of 25 percent annually, this was an appealing benefi t. Last but
not least, the social dynamics of the democratically managed adaptive
team appeared to correspond well with the actual experiences and expec-
tations of the average working programmer. 61 Weinberg provided a great
deal of anecdotal evidence suggesting that programmers worked best in
environments in which they participated in all aspects of project develop-
ment, from design to implementation to testing. By eliminating the things
that caused programmers to become dissatisfi ed, turnover could be
reduced signifi cantly. The adaptive team approach to programming,
argued Weinberg, was not only cost-effective and effi cient; it kept the
programmers happy. And of course, happy programmers were produc-
tive programmers.
Like the CPT and the hierarchical system of management, egoless
programming constituted a solution to a specifi c conception of the bur-
geoning software crisis. The advocates of the adaptive team approach
shared with many of their contemporaries certain basic assumptions
about the nature of programming as a skill and activity: that program-
ming was an essentially creative undertaking; that individual program-
mers varied enormously in terms of style and productivity; and that
current programming practices resembled craft more than they did
science. They also believed that despite these exceptional characteristics,
software development was an activity that could, to a certain extent, be
managed and controlled. What was unusual about the adaptive team
solution was the degree to which it offered computer programmers a
legitimate career path and an attractive professional identity.
In the hierarchical system of management, programmers were gener-
ally regarded as technicians rather than professionals. The few program-
mers who rose through the hierarchy did so by abandoning their technical
interests in favor of managerial careers. The CPT offered status and
authority only to a small corps of elite superprogrammers. All but the
most talented individuals served as much less privileged support person-
nel. As will be seen, many programmers were extremely concerned with
issues of professional development, both as they related to themselves as
individuals and to their larger disciplinary community. The journal arti-
cles, job advertisements, and letters to the editor from this period show
that many programmers were worried about becoming dead-ended in
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