A World of Difference

There is a world of difference between maintenance and development projects.  NOT!!!!

OK, this may be a controversial topic, or it may not be, but I think I need to put some parameters around my comment.  In my mind, the actual act of developing a new application, doing a major enhancement to an existing application, doing a minor enhancement to an existing application or doing a bug fix for an existing application are fundamentally the same with regard to the tasks that need to be accomplished.  How the organization wishes to perceive them, from an accounting, management or accountability perspective may be different, but the same process need to be accomplished.

Whether the scale of the work is large (project) or small (bug fix), the developer still needs to have some requirements, do some coding, do some testing (really important step) and promote it to the next environment.  How the Project Manager (remember this isn't necessarily a title, but a role that someone plays) organizes these tasks, reports on these tasks and celebrates the successes with the team (you do this, right?) is up to the Project Manager.

Some organizations have an arbitrary limit of xx days of effort means a project.  Or perhaps there is an accounting limit of $yyy,yyy dollars is operating (maintenance) but anything over is capital and needs to be a project.  But you know what?  If it takes xx-1 days or xx+1 days, from a developers perspective there is no difference.  If it takes 19 days (maintenance) to add a feature to an existing application or 21 days (small project) to add that exact same feature, the developer is doing the same work.  The processes that the organization asks for may be different, the documentation requested may be different, or perhaps it is who pays the bill that is different, these are all things that surround the core act of development, but should not impact it.

If you feel that I am wrong, please let me know, although based on previous notes I don't think anyone reading this has any qualms about letting me know that they disagree with what I am saying.