Agile Factory

[Article posted to the Agile forum of CM Crossroads]

Software Factory is a concept put up by Doug McIlroy in 1968, as a possible solution to what he termed then the Software Crisis.

History explored first his other solution: Software Component. He probably saw the two tightly tied, but they proved to be quite decoupled.

The software factory became a reality only after the burst of the World Wide Web, and after the internet bubble crisis which followed a few years later.

It was made possible by the invasion of the desktop metaphor, which lowered the access to software (virtually anybody could come in) but also locked users as plain consumers: what you see is all you get.

It strikes me that the Agile practices are being used as the ideology to implement the software factory among the masses.

Continuous Integration is the Ford assembly line of our times.

Is this what McIlroy had in mind when he spoke of mass production of software components? I must admit that I didn't anticipate this degradation of the status of the software developer, following indeed this of the printing worker, or of the telephone operator in other times...