Reinventing Software Development

I had always felt a little out of place at many of the organisations that I had worked at. Business appeared all about documents. Requirements documents, design documents, analysis documents, tender documents ...
Relatively little time was spent on software development and no time was devoted to creativity. 

Software was considered to be the repetitive task of just typing in code. The design was done by Architect teams that had little knowledge of the software, had no responsibility for delivering the final solution and ultimately didn't care.

I had always considered this to be wrong. Software was analogised as ship building, road building or whatever, but it is nothing of the sort, it is software engineering and the processes are unique to it. Coding should be an incredibly creative task, where the design is revisited and enhanced. To achieve this time needs to be allocated to the process and the environment needs to allow.

I read the book (Getting Real) by 37Signals and much of what was said really hit a chord and made me want to change.Work does not have to be boring and overly process driven. Work can be fun, enjoyable and most importantly a creative place. With less staff and less process I am now far more productive releasing software that fits a need.