SCM and Rhetorics

The question how to convince others of the need for SCM is sometimes dealt with in a manner which focuses on the means to achieve conviction (rhetorics), avoiding the question of what it is the others should adopt.

This is presented as a rational, pragmatic attitude, based on the recognition that people do not behave according to reason, but follow intuitive processes. Our effort in convincing others would better be spent in psychology, in advertisement, and in politics.

This apparent cynicism may however as often hide a lot of naivete. If SCM is adopted for superficial and ignorant motives, have we achieved anything of our initial goal?

In the same way that one cannot force somebody to be free, one cannot fool him into being wise.

It is particularly true in software and thus is SCM, where management is necessary because we navigate at the boundaries of sustainable complexity, that one cannot in general, distinguish between the means and the goals, between the tools and the processes. For this reason also, visual tools hide more than they show.

-- MarcGirod - 15 Jun 2009


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