Although IT professionals should take care to avoid engineering envy, it is often useful to learn from the experiences of other engineering disciplines. In this posting, I will compare and contrast construction of a building to implementation of a large software project.
Leaving aside financial engineering, building construction starts with an architect, who lays out the general shape and look of the building. A structural engineer creates a detailed design, with an eye towards ensuring that the building will remain standing despite the best efforts of wind, gravity, and plate tectonics. A construction engineer works out the details of the construction process — for example, it is good if the building can support itself while being built as opposed to doing so only when completed. Other engineering specialties may be required as well, for example, HVAC (heating, ventilating, and air conditioning).
Once the building is built, different skills are needed, including operating engineers, maintenance personnel, and janitors.
A very similar sequence of events can play out for a large software application. Software architects (for better or worse) lay out the general shape of the project, developers design and code it, and others ensure that it is built, tested, and safely ensconced in some source-code management system.
However, once the application is completed, it is likely that its care and feeding will be taken over by application, database, and system administrators. The architects and developers will switch to other projects (possibly version N+1 of this same application), and perhaps even retire or otherwise move on. Of course, if the application runs at multiple sites, there might well be a separate set of administrators for each site. But for simplicity, let’s assume that this application runs at only one site.
Now suppose that it is necessary to parallelize this application.
This is tantamount to major structural change to the building, such as adding several new floors. A structural change of this nature is clearly not a job that you would normally entrust to operating engineers, maintenance personnel, or janitors.
But what else can you do if the original architects and developers are gone?
paulmckrcu 