Ours is a big business. Even in smaller companies, it can seem like one person can hardly make a difference, much less a lasting impression. I regularly get messages from people who lament that they have no influence, that they are only one small voice in a programming wilderness and have little hope of improving software development practices. Some are programmers and software engineers, eager to make a difference not just make more code. Others are managers, in awe of their technical staff, who feel they have little to contribute compared to the jack flash working for them who can modify C code in 15 different open edit windows at once.
Influence and impact take many forms. An entire industry or profession can, indeed, be transformed by the acts and contributions of one individual. Edsgar Dijkstra applied the theoretical work of Bohm and Jacopini to program style and, in his historical letter to the editor, “GOTO Considered Harmful” (Dijkstra 1968), triggered a controversy that would spark a revolution in the practice of programming. A young Bill Gates made some right moves in deploying system software for the nascent microcomputer industry, and our business was never again the same. Alan Kaye turned a doctoral dissertation into the foundations for a revolutionary language that would help turn objects into a new programming paradigm. Indeed, at the core of contemporary computer programming is really a rather small number of essential ideas coming from a relatively small cadre of innovators.
It is not always the best known inventors and creators or the most visible movers and shakers or the most active writers and consultants who make a real impact, however. Sometimes it is others, less known and less honored, who leave the deepest impressions. Consider the impresario.
English is a ravenous language, eagerly borrowing from almost everywhere. The Italian word impresario means entrepreneur, another borrowing, from the French, meaning one who organizes and coordinates an enterprise. In English, though, impresario often connotes the more merely ceremonial supervision of the circus ringmaster or the theatrical host. The impresario is not the band but the tour manager, not the performer but the straw boss, not the engineer but the lab director. Nonetheless, the power and importance of the impresario may too often be grossly underestimated.
Technology-oriented visitors to Australia have often been impressed by the level of discipline and sophistication found within many software application development groups. This is not to say that everyone is first rank or that all the software is “spot on,” as the Australians would express it, but just that the effective use of tools and systematic methods is remarkably widespread.
The roots of today's best practices go back to the 1970s, when some of the pioneering software methodologists began to visit the antipodes. Because the country is so small and the information technology field smaller still, a surprising fraction of Australian software professionals ended up being trained directly by these pioneers, the original developers and primary proponents of modern methods and practices. Many of those students who came under the early influence of a Constantine, a DeMarco, a Weinberg, or a Yourdon have since advanced to management positions or have become consultants and professional leaders in their own rights, shaping modern software and applications development practices.
A formative role in this culture-changing process was played by one man and a tiny training organization, both known to few people outside of Australia. DP Education Proprietary Limited was the company, and Dennis Davie was the jocular impresario who first lured Ed Yourdon and Larry Constantine down under to teach their new approaches to the Aussies. At a time when few people in the United States had even heard of structured methods and the first handcrafted “Orange Book” edition of Structured Design was yet to be printed, Australians were getting the structured stuff first hand. Davie was a pleasure to work with, and over the years he was able to draw a sizeable network of skilled teachers and innovative thinkers into presenting in Australia. Neither rich nor famous, Davie retired happily and quietly to Australia's Gold Coast, occasionally teaching a class or two himself for the company after it was taken over by his son. Whether he knew it or not, Davie, who died in early 1998, made a difference for a lot of people.
Closer to home we have other examples of the influential impresario. Ed Yourdon may himself be best known for the methods that include his name or as a prolific writer and persuasive presenter, but his most enduring contribution to the field may be as an impresario. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that he created structured methods as an industry. The lineage of computer-aided software engineering can be also be traced back to that same root stock.
An important part of his genius was his ability to attract talent and recognize it when it was in front of him. He was able not only to read correctly the incipient currents of contemporary innovation, but to gather around him the best and brightest thinkers and teachers of the day. At its apogee under Ed and his wife Toni Nash, Yourdon, Inc., was the place to be. Almost anyone with something to say and the drive to say it wanted to work there. An amazing number of today's most influential leaders in the field got their start directly or indirectly through Ed Yourdon.
The impresario is not of mere historic interest; the role is today as important as ever. Digital Consulting's George Schussel styles himself in this role, for example. Among other things, he was instrumental in getting a reluctant Larry Constantine back into the front lines of software development. He and Rick Friedman, yet another industry impresario, were major forces in bringing object technology to the attention of a widening audience. Orchestrating some of the most successful conference programs in the industry was KoAnn Tingley Vikoren, the former impresaria of the Software Development Conferences who got me involved in the very first one in 1988.
Fittingly, the country that gave us the word has it's own impresario of information technology. Giovanni Modica is not only a great Italian cook, but he has a passionate vision of helping to transform Italy into a world leader in information systems development. The means is technology transfer, which is also the name of his company. By importing the best and the brightest from around the world, he hopes to brighten the future of Italian development practices. He is likely to succeed. Through zeal and sincerity he has assembled a portfolio of world-class presenters who now make regular stops in Milan and Rome to bring the latest in effective methods and tools to Italian developers.
Decades of research have shown that the success of a technical organization can be critically dependent on how certain key roles are played. Managers who recognize talent but are not awed by it, who can challenge the best to be better, are catalysts for technical success. These are the impresarios who can foster an organization that will always be expanding its horizons. They may not cut code or architect systems themselves, but how they push, pull, support, and resist can be the critical ingredients that either enable or disable the entire enterprise.
Of equally vital importance are the people who act as gatekeepers, conduits for technical information. Gatekeepers are the ones who go to conferences, who read technical publications, who buy books, and who bring new ideas to the attention of colleagues. Gatekeepers are often impresarios on a modest scale, the ones who organize “brown-bag seminars” and bring in outside speakers and trainers. They are not so much sources as channels, and without them there would be no communication.
Maybe this is you.
From Software Development, Volume 3, #9, September 1995.