Open Discussion Thread for "Automating Software Development Processes," by Tim Kitchens

Thanks, Tim. This is a great single-reading overview of the costs and benefits of automating many development processes. What I find interesting is that, in my experience, even the clear logic laid out here is frequently either not enough to persuade management, or is threatening to certain types of stakeholders. It can be very difficult to muster the political will in an organization to overcome the urge to code, code, code and not look at the big picture. Thanks for sharing your insights. I will definitely link my colleagues to this article!

It's a great irony that we as developers spend so much time writing code that embodies and automates the business processes of our clients, yet we are so eager to overlook this same effort with regard to ourselves. I agree that having an adequate automation suite with regard to testing and deployment is a boon to any development shop -- and a threat to some people's job security.