My two cents(and worth every penny):

I used to be a housing contractor quite a few years ago. Just like in software, sharing the "vision" is the critical element. Software or houses, it all comes down to "What are we building?" and having each contributor being able to understand it. In construction one has a few thousand years of precedent and it's still really hard. Tools like blueprints,Structural engineering handbooks, etc and common components (92 5/8 " studs, 8" block, etc), really help but are no means foolproof.

Software development is in a vastly more primitive stage as far as tools and conventions are concerned which makes the estimating process so difficult. I think that factor alone contributes much to the "my development tool is the best development tool" mentality. It sure does for me!

As far as the not-for-profit factor, I don't think it matters a whit. If one want's to do a good job for a client, one makes the effort. The fact that the organization wants to make a profit never made any difference to me, but I'm an Ayn Rand fan so that tells you where I'm coming from.

Gary



>This is apropos of nothing, just something I was thinking about this afternoon due to its absence in my current job. Maybe it will be a thought provoking diversion from the how-doya questions (not that there's anything wrong with that....) and the endless angst over the future of FoxPro. God, we all need a break from that and an open-ended question worth pondering.
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>A few years ago I went to a C developers conference at the Marriott in downtown San Francisco. My conference fee was paid for by Microsoft, and thank you very much. There was a keynote speaker every morning. This one particular morning it was a guy named Jim McCarthy. He was a honcho on the first version of Visual C++ and then Actor, one of the first object oriented languages when that was still a quaint phrase. From the conference brochure it didn't sound like there was going to be much technical meat, the bits and the bytes, and I seriously considered blowing it off and sleeping in. Boy, am I glad I didn't.
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>The session started right on time, straggly assed developers still walking in. Jim McCarthy didn't look any less straggly assed than the rest of us. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and jeans. Beard, growly. He looked like some guy you might meet walking the beach. He picked up the microphone and spoke into it as he wandered back and forth across the stage.
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>His topic was successful software projects. And his main point was that the key ingredient is shared vision.
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>Shared vision, he said, is when your heads go up and down at the same time and side to side at the same time. Something is said at a meeting and you exchange glances? Nothing said? (Quoting as best I can remember). And you know as soon as it's said you're already on the same page.
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>That's shared vision, he said. And without it your project is doomed. He went into finer detail but that was my takeaway -- you want to be on a team with shared vision. That's developer nirvana.
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>He said one other memorable thing in his talk. He said if you're working 60 hours a week you better believe in what you're doing. Some smartass lady down front shouted out, "You mean we can only work 60 hours a week now?" Laughter. He stopped. He went off his notes and talked straight to her. "If you're working 80 hours a week you're evading something," he said.