Some Inaccurate Statements About Software Factories

I recently came across this post from Jack Greenfield (the driving force behind Microsoft's Software Factory Initiative), which was written in response to an article by 6th Sense Analytics co-founder and CEO Greg Burnell criticizing the software factory approach. 6th Sense sells a product that plugs into Visual Studio and other IDEs to capture metrics related to the time spent on various developer activities. These metrics are then posted to a server that enables IT management to view and analyze them.

In his article, Mr. Burnell takes the term "factory" quite literally, putting forth the notion that software factories "crush the flexibility and creativity needed to build software and meet constantly changing requirements". This is the statement that appears to have provoked Mr. Greenfield the most, and I must say I agree with Jack that Mr. Burnell's characterization is way off the mark.

The software factory initiative may be misnamed, because it is much more than a code generation framework, as Mr. Burnell seems to equate it with. It integrates code generation with patterns and best practices, frameworks, interfaces, testing, refactoring and just about every aspect of the solution development life cycle, including metrics.

I've been tracking the Software Factory initiative with great interest from the dual perspectives of increasing my own productivity and the quality of the software I produce. I like what I've seen so far. If you haven't done so already, I highly recommend downloading the web services software factory and the smart client software factory to get your head around where Microsoft is going with this. It's really pretty amazing.

Once you see a software factory in action, it's hard to think of it as something that crushes flexibility and creativity. Quite the contrary. If, as Mr. Burnell states in his article, the key to success in building great software is "visibility, visibility, visibility", then you can expect lots and lots of visibility from every possible angle when using these software factories, from initial concept to final deployment. That can only lead to better software, and might actually create better software developers.

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