Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
development efforts, and were used in nothing but small local projects.
They may have proven ineffi cient or diffi cult to implement, although
there is evidence that the use of informal, unstructured programming
teams was standard practice in the industry. At least one author rejected
the adaptive team approach because it failed to provide adequate mecha-
nisms for formal managerial control.
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It seems likely that this last objec-
tion was what ultimately proved fatal to Weinberg's proposal. The
adaptive team approach reinforced the notion that programmers were
independent professionals. It shifted organizational control and author-
ity away from managers. It ceded valuable occupational territory to a
group whose institutional power base had not yet been fi rmly estab-
lished. Weinberg's adaptive teams were unappealing to everyone but
programmers, and programmers did not have the leverage to push
through such an unpopular agenda.
From Exhilaration to Disillusionment
The 1968 NATO Conference on Software Engineering was, according
to contemporary accounts, an exhilarating experience for many partici-
pants. The public acknowledgment of a perceived software crisis was a
cathartic moment for the industry. As one prominent computer scientist
described it, “The general admission of the software failure in this group
of responsible people is the most refreshing experience that I have had
in a number of years, because the admission of shortcomings is the
primary condition for improvement.”
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Despite the general recognition
of impending crisis, the spirit of the conference was “positive, even lib-
eratory.”
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Attendees rallied behind the organizers' call for “a switch
from home-made software to manufactured software, from tinkering to
engineering.”
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Software engineering emerged as the dominant rhetorical
paradigm for discussing the future of software development. By adopting
the “types of theoretical foundations and practical disciplines that are
traditional in the established branches of engineering,” computer pro-
gramming could be successfully transformed from a black art into an
industrial discipline. Software workers from a wide variety of disciplines
and backgrounds adopted the rhetoric of software engineering as a
shared discourse within which to discuss their mutual professional
aspirations.
In order to capitalize on the enthusiasm generated in the wake of the
Garmisch meeting, the NATO Science Committee quickly organized a
second conference to be held the following year in Rome. The Rome
