A Scandal in Software: Chapter 10 (Conclusion)

[Editor's note: Click here for the top-level page of Donna Davis's software development story, A Scandal in Software. You can also use the next, previous, and up links below to navigate the structure.]

"There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again." The Lost World A. Conan Doyle

Sinking into the cushions of a Well Grounded loveseat and savoring the hazelnut aroma, I couldn't help remembering the first time I spotted the coffee shop alongside Dr. Wirth's impressive shingle: Foundation for the Analysis of Information Technology and Humanity. From where I sat, I could just see the sign extended like a metal arm at a right angle from the ancient brick building as if directing traffic--advising Humanity when to yield, and Technology when to slow down. (There would be no stopping it.) They were strange bed-fellows and I felt oddly trapped between humanity as my life and technology as my livelihood.

I was feeling my humanity in all its frailty, jealous that I couldn't simply reboot and expect immediate performance improvement. I settled for a caffeine rush and sipped (tempted to chug) the hard stuff--a double espresso. I wouldn't be able to sleep tonight, but what difference did it make? My plagued mind was a greater obstacle to sleep than any mere beverage I might consume.

I knew I had a lot to be thankful for. After all, I hadn't lost my real job, only my undercover one. I worked for the Foundation, not Grey-Webber. What difference did it make to me personally whether the pharmaceutical powers-that-be chose to outsource the bulk of their IT services or not? It's not like this was anything new....it was happening everywhere. I'd just gotten so close to the project and the team...embroiled as Dr. Wirth would say.

The cappuccino machine whirred, momentarily interrupting not only an impressive Eric Clapton acoustic track, but my festering thoughts. I glanced around to see other patrons smiling and talking unintelligibly like extras in a movie, as if nothing extraordinary had even happened. And so the world turns. Life goes on.

The truth is, while I felt like the whole thing was a Big Fat Mistake, pondering it now, I knew Grey-Webber wasn't entirely to blame. They had a business to run and their logic--that they weren't in the IT industry and its volatility could better be handled by those who were--seemed reasonable. Had we, as software developers, or even as a working society in general, pushed them in the corner, with fat process and attitudes of entitlement? Had we become modern day Austenites with elaborate expectations of making suitable employment matches (with a healthy pension plan and 401K dowry) in arrangements of convenience that would support our standards of living forever or as long as it suited our fancy?

I figured the sooner we realized we needed to think like independent consultants--whether we worked as one or not--the better. Consultants know how to keep their skills current and their resumes marketable. They know how to get the job, do the work, and move on. Consultants aren't personally devastated when one job ends because they know another is right around the corner. Like brick-masons.

Still, I couldn't help mourning the loss of loyalty in the corporate world that seemed to parallel the domestic, with the proliferation of serial spouses and step-families. If not at home, and not a work, where was stability to be found? Were we really supposed to get used to a completely agile world with no roots whatsoever?

I jotted down some of these thoughts while they were steamy and pungent in my composition book with its frayed edges that I always kept handy. You never knew when a random thought might trigger an article or another nebulous book idea.

A paper slipped out of the composition book. I opened it to find several Charles Dickens quotes I had pasted in a document some time ago when they caught my eye.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way..." A Tale of Two Cities

"Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares." Nicholas Nickleby

"I admire machinery as much is any man, and am as thankful to it as any man can be for what it does for us. But it will never be a substitute for the face of a man, with his soul in it, encouraging another man to be brave and true." Wreck of the Golden Mary

I turned to a blank page in my composition book and scribbled down Book Idea: Dickens on Development. I'd never felt more like a David Copperfield and the Grey-Webber folks were sure facing Hard Times. I'd always liked Dickens but never noticed how curiously relevant his writing was to the contemporary software development profession. Maybe the software development profession was a curious parallel to the Human Condition?

The sight of Anne made me quickly stow the notebook away. Dr. Wirth had asked me to meet him at the office a little later, but Anne had agreed to stop by for coffee. I was hoping to have the chance to break the news to her myself about my role at Grey-Webber. How would she take hearing that, unlike herself, I wasn't out of a job? More importantly, would she feel like I'd deceived her all these weeks we'd been working together? For some reason, that mattered a lot to me.

She smiled when she saw me, and I automatically mirrored it back to her. She looked remarkably fresh and...I don't know...not depressed, all things considered.

"How are you?" The real question was how I could produce such an uninspired opening line.

She didn't say "Lousy" or "Fine" or the regional favorite, "Fair to Middlin'." She said "Great!" and acted liked she really meant it.

"Great? After being told you're going to lose your job?"

"Yeah, well, it's not like we didn't have some idea it was coming."

"But what about all the work you've done recently? The team-building, the retreat, turning the project around? Do you think Dan knew? I mean, if he did, what was the point of contracting with...I mean why did he even bother putting us through all that?

"Actually I had an interesting conversation with Dan yesterday." Anne sat down beside me, picked up a menu, and scanned it absent mindedly. "I pretty much asked him the same thing. It seems he did know, and after losing repeated battles with management to get them to change their minds, he settled on Plan B."

I wondered if she was purposefully tormenting me. I gave her my best "Please continue" look.

"It seems he'd heard of this Dr. Wirth fellow and his ideas for improving both productivity and employee satisfaction in project teams. Even though he couldn't put a stop to the GW outsourcing plans, he still had a working budget, and no one objected to him making good use of it until the end. Apparently his plan was to see if our team could be turned around...to see if we really could be productive and enjoy at work at the same time."

"But what was the point, if he was just going to let you go anyway?"

"Well that's the kicker. To hear him tell it, he wanted us to leave with the confidence that we could be successful...not feeling like we'd been failures."

"So you would be happy in the unemployment line?" I couldn't help feeling a tad cynical.

Anne cocked an eyebrow. "I notice you said 'you would be happy in the unemployment line', not 'we'. Are you hinting you're not affected by this just the same as the rest of us?"

My stomach sank. Here it was. I was going to have to tell her that I worked for Dr. Wirth, and had been working undercover at Grey-Webber to find out about their team and methodology problems. As far as they were concerned, I was an imposter. I could feel my face turning red...I was lousy at confrontations.

I was searching for the right words to say when a crash behind the counter--likely a coffee mug hitting the floor and shattering--caused the comforting buzz of humanity to collectively pause and grow silent. It was just for a couple of seconds but I stopped breathing. Then I heard someone gasp an apologetic, "Oops," and the room's heartbeat resumed amidst chuckles and conversation fragments.

"It's all right, Brian. Dan explained everything." Anne put me out of my misery. "So you work next door then?"

"Theoretically, yes. Although I can't say I've worked there much. I went straight to GW right after I started."

"Well I guess we're likely to bump into each other then."

I wasn't following, and as usual, my face said it for me loud and clear.

"Apparently Dan's family has a little money...we got some idea of that when we saw the beach house, remember?" Anne was leaning forward and talking fast. "Well, he's decided to start his own IT services company--software development mainly--and offered the whole project team jobs."

"You're kidding."

"No...in fact, it sounds pretty cool. He really wants to do it right, using agile methods, a very collaborative atmosphere. And...the offices are going to be in your building!"

"Is everyone taking him up on his offer?"

"It's too soon to know for sure. Probably depends on whether someone dangles a carrot that's too big to resist, but so far just about everyone is interested. Dan was decent to work for and it really sounds like he has a different atmosphere in mind...profit sharing and all."

I was trying to absorb the steady stream of information Anne was sending my way. "Wow. That's something."

"Oh, but Darlene's not planning to do it. You won't believe what she has in mind."

I couldn't imagine. With Darlene, there was no telling.

"She's had this idea for a couple of years but felt like her job was too good to quit for something so risky. So now she's thinking with the severance package and all, it's Providence."

"What's the idea?"

"She's planning to combine her technology experience and artistic side. Her business idea has to do with creating a whole line of merchandise based on technology combined with classic art and science. She showed me one graphic she did that was like Stonehenge...except instead of stones positioned just so, it was all kinds of older personal computers. Pretty cool. I think she's mainly planning to market T-shirts, posters, and all sorts of stuff with her designs to software companies for trade shows and that sort of thing. You know what company name she was thinking of using? ITopia. But it's already taken."

"Man. Isn't it something that unemployment could be so liberating? I mean, if everyone had all these ideas...these dreams...why did it take being laid off to take action? What if everything had continued like it was at GW? Would they have been satisfied?"

"Nobody was satisfied the way things were," said Anne. "But we had security...or at least we thought we did. And it was a good paying job with benefits. Too good to walk away from. But now that they're giving us a little shove, well, I guess we're trying to make the best of it. With our severance packages, we've got a little cushion from the real world, so it won't hurt to try."

I looked forward to hearing Dr. Wirth's take on all this. Had we, the lofty Foundation for the Analysis of Technology and Humanity, been a failure, or had the most humane outcome resulted after all? Like cutting off a gangrene leg to save a life?

As the time approached for my meeting with Dr. Wirth, Anne and I said our goodbyes. I was able to leave her with a genuine smile knowing we were going to be working in the same building, maybe even meeting for lunch at Well Grounded, or having a picnic in the park down the street.

Dr. Wirth slapped me on the back with such vigor, you'd have thought he'd been away at a conference or on vacation. He was clearly trying to take it easier--he didn't challenge me to ping-pong--but I imagined it would just be a matter of time. The light was back in his eyes and he declared that with his recent "pipe-cleaning" (heart catherization?) he was in better condition than he was at the age of 30.

"Did you know?" I couldn't help asking Dr. Wirth. I wanted to know if he'd known all along that Grey-Webber had already made up its mind to outsource their IT department, regardless of the project outcome.

"Well, there was always hope as far as I was concerned, Brian. But remember there's more than one means to an end. It's like a marriage therapist trying to reconcile a couple when they're buying life insurance and cyanide for one another. Is it always in their best interest to stay together? Maybe not. But we proved it could done...an effective project...and that's one for the textbooks, whether it turned any corporate heads or not."

"Do you think the era of programmers working internally for corporations is over?"

"I personally think all this outsourcing is the corporate equivalent of the Hula-Hoop or Mechanical Bull...the Technology Pokeman fad they'll ride hard until the new wears off, the numbers start coming in, and reality screams too loudly to ignore." Dr. Wirth put his hands on his hips, and mockingly said, "Oh? You mean there really hasn't been a three million dollar ROI like the consultants promised? You mean developers in another city or country don't understand our business needs like our own employees used to, and that has cost us our strategic market advantage? You mean there is a greater national impact beyond our corporate agenda to plunging our own citizens into unemployment?"

Dr. Wirth settled into one of the comfortable leather chairs and motioned for me to do the same. He kicked back in the recliner, propping his feet up and crossing his hands behind his head. "You know...I've lived long enough to see these kinds of things come and go. Before outsourcing IT it was a question of centralizing or decentralizing IT. One company I worked for decided to centralize...moved all their mainframes and such to their corporate headquarters, uprooted families and laid off people who weren't willing to move. Brought it an axe man to do the dirty work...I mean, realignment. It wasn't 18 months later, they decided to decentralize again."

"I'm starting to wonder if I didn't choose the best profession after all. Or maybe I'm just ten years too late."

"Well, Brian, we're just experiencing some of the same growing pains that followed the industrial revolution in manufacturing. Aren't car parts and televisions and computers manufactured overseas? That's the corporate mentality...find cheap labor. The thing is, software development and IT support isn't as cut and dried as manufacturing. That's not to say there aren't talented, highly educated programmers all over the world, but it's not fair to any of us to act as if we're in a plug-and-play game."

Dr. Wirth let down his chair with a flourish and leapt to his feet, but stood motionless for a moment and put his hand on his chest. I felt mild panic. "I keep forgetting about that blasted scar. Hurts when I move too fast." I let out my breath as he walked over to his desk and leafed through some papers. "I've been charting outsourcing patterns and it looks like we've already seen the peak in the curve and it's starting to dip a little. Now you're hearing all the buzz about 'right-sourcing' and staff augmentation. But I do think we're seeing a radical change in mindset through all this upheaval."

"On whose part? The programmers or the corporate decision-makers?"

"Both, really. As programmers, we're being prodded out of our comfort zones and losing a sense of complacency. That's the essence of the agile movement...the challenge to find a sweet spot that adds timely delivery and loses fat process without sacrificing quality. Lose the pickle, add the lettuce. And the corporate dogs are being forced to learn a little more about what it is we do...and the value good IT bring to an organization. But the real scandal in software is that it took this, a veritable professional crisis, to begin understanding each other's needs. It's going to cost us all."

"How so?" Dr. Wirth was on a roll and I wanted to learn all I could.

"Remember what you said a few minutes ago? Wondering if you'd chosen the wrong profession? Well, you're not the only one who's having thoughts like that. We're already seeing a decline in computer science graduates. We're scaring them off before they even get started."

Dr. Wirth sat down in front of his computer. He had a cool vertical mouse (due to the Carpal Tunnel) that made him look like he was playing video games. "Brian, I'm getting a little tired, but before you go, I wanted to tell you about this email I got from an editor friend of mine...works at one of the best technical book publishing companies."

Wiley? O'Reilly? APress? Dorset House? That new one...developer.* books? I'd be interested to know which publisher Dr. Wirth really thought was the best. I'd have to ask him later, as I didn't want to interrupt his train of thought.

"Seems he has an idea for something like A Tale of Two Teams...a fictionalized account of two project teams using different methodologies for software projects. You remember DeMarco's The Deadline, don't you? I think he's got in mind a next generation of that sort of thing. He said the point was not to paint one as passe' and one as perfect, but to give the reader a good feel for what each process would be like to work with on a daily basis. Enough of a story wrapped around it to make it interesting. Despite ubiquitous books and articles, a lot of shops still haven't transitioned to agile, and he thinks it's largely because developers and their managers just can't picture the process in action."

"Sounds interesting. I'd buy it."

"The question isn't whether you'd buy it, but whether you'll write it."

"What?" I was sure I must have heard Dr. Wirth wrong.

"The editor wants me involved as a technical advisor...to make sure the methodologies are captured accurately. But he asked if there were any writers I was already comfortable with. Of course you may already have too much going, so if you're not interested, I'm sure he'll find..."

"I'm interested!" I didn't need him to finish his sentence.

"Brian...look I know you're probably a little disillusioned by what happened at Grey-Webber. I hope you can see that through our work here, there's a chance we can make a difference. A lot of people are blogging about the bad state of affairs, but what good does that do anyone? I'm convinced that outsourcing it just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself." Dr. Wirth walked over to his towering bookshelves and deftly extracted a thin yellow volume and handed it to me. "Take this one with you when you go."

I read the spine: Are Your Lights On: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is by Donald Cause and Gerald Weinberg. "If outsourcing is just a symptom, what's the root problem?"

"Read the book and then we'll talk."