Developers hate it when someone changes the requirements in the middle of a development project. What few have realized yet is that they've gone and changed the requirements to be a developer right in the middle of our careers.

An Unnecessary, But Illustrative, Story

The summer of 1994 found me in Mesa, Arizona, new-minted diploma in hand, getting ready for my first real job. A couple days before I was to report for the new position, I received news that the job that I had pulled my wife and baby daughter into the gods-forsaken desert for had, well, been eliminated. Not a happy piece of news to receive. Since my parents lived there in Mesa we ended up taking refuge in the familial homestead. I love my parents, don't get me wrong, but this was not a celebrated event—by any of us.

This was apparently all the impetus that my dad needed to leave the largish firm he worked for as the main estate attorney. He asked me to help him automate the documents he used to create trusts and wills. For money. This was the start of my transition from an English B.A. to a computer programmer. Who knew you could make money with computers?!?

The Point

My dad found that having much of the drudge work in creating those documents automated allowed him to concentrate on larger aspects of estate law. He was able to grapple with the greater context and put things together in a way he hadn't been able to before. This change in focus helped both his practice and his clients because he was able to provide better service at a cheaper cost and still make more money himself.

So here's what this has to do with software development: advances in tools, design patterns, and technologies have created the same shift for software developers that my dad realized as an attorney. While the occasional Luddite might quail at the thought of leaving vi for an IDE with built-in debugger support, most developers are happy to move away from the drudge work that has preoccupied us for so long (as with any boost in efficiency the expected new leisure has yet to show up).

In fact, what we find now is that developers are expected to take on more and more responsibility. This is a good thing overall because increased responsibility == increased value (and hence, generally, salary). This can be a bad thing, however, if software developers neglect some of the new skills that we need in order to handle these responsibilities well.

This is what lies at the heart of recent calls for developers to learn "soft" skills and develop better communication. That's because, unless you work in some back-water in the benighted hinterlands, the days of the cave-troll coder are over. A developer can no longer count on being isolated from users, managers, or <shudder> marketing weasels.

What Everybody Seems to be Missing

All of this is well and good and recognized by those who are paying attention. But it's not enough.

I like to compare business software development with practicing business law because they are both logical disciplines that have to support the human decision-making processes that are inherent in running a business. There's one large difference between the two that I think is important—lawyers are taught the fundamentals of business as a part of their law degree. They don't have an MBA or anything, but they do attend classes explaining typical business structures and basic accounting principles. That's because doing so helps them both with their interface to the business and in their ability to deliver work that properly supports the companies they work for or with.

Well, software developers are increasingly in a similar relationship with the companies they work for. I'm fortunate in my English degree because I'm reasonably well set up in the whole soft/communication skills area. What I'm finding lately, though, is that the courses I took in Business, Economics and Accounting (I never did figure out what I wanted to major in) are becoming crucial to my ability to do my job as a software developer. Understanding double-book accounting and GAAP help me understand the needs of the finance guys. Understanding supply-chain and basic inventory control helps me understand the operations folks.

I'm not talking here about becoming an expert in business. What I'm saying is that developers need to take the time to make sure that they understand the reasons behind the weird and wacky things that other business units are doing (and requesting that we automate).

And it wouldn't hurt to take a formal class or two.

Too often, the software developer going over the current supply-chain configuration with an operations manager will jump to conclusions, or worse, offer "helpful" suggestions about how things can be done more logically. More often than not, we come across as isolated from the realities that the current configuration was created to overcome. Or worse, we come across as judgmental jerks.

It's a drag having to learn so much that was originally considered outside of our discipline. Unless you're a hardware or other highly-specialized developer, however, it's going to turn out to be the kind of thing that sets the competent apart from the competence-challenged.