[Themaintainers] How do you make maintainance less boring? (was: Thanks and McKinsey Maintenance Report)

[Andrew Russell]

> On Oct 22, 2020, at 3:37 AM, Bastien <bzg at bzg.fr> wrote:
> 
> lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org> writes:
> 
>> I think Andy's take was the report was "on point but a
>> bit boring."
> 
> Isn't this the very definition of "maintainance"? :)
> 
> If I may use this tangent to open a new discussion: how can we change
> the overall perception of maintainance as "boring"?

To be clear, my ‘take' was tongue-in-cheek.  I think Bastien is exactly on the right track - stories are more or less engaging to the extent that authors know their audiences.  One should not expect a character-driven drama from a McKinsey report on “The future of maintenance for distributed fixed assets”; just as one should not expect a data-driven assessment of IoT to be published in, say, The American Poetry Review.  But one beautiful thing about maintenance is that it’s an engaging topic for both audiences (and so many others).  The challenge comes in how one frames the discussion. 

A big +1 to Bastien’s last word (below)

"I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about maintainance - and actually a million ones.”

Andy



> 
> I guess it really depends on the fields.
> 
> I have recently discovered the "Technical Debt Quadrant", from reading
> this interesting blog post:
> 
> https://somehowmanage.com/2020/10/19/manifestations-of-technical-debt/
> 
> I think each part of the quadrant nicely captures what it means to
> maintain a software (not the service it runs, the software itself):
> the only quadrant you want to find yourself in is the "prudent" one,
> where you only have to "deal with the consequences" (here again, a
> nice periphrase for "maintainance".)
> 
> That said, "dealing with the consequences" still sounds negative and
> quasi punitive.  You spontaneously represent yourself dealing with
> things retroactively, paying a debt.
> 
> BUT, my experience with software maintainance is a bit different.
> 
> 1. It is more about PEOPLE than "things": a user reports a bug and you
>   fix it, it will help this user, that's motivating.  Maintainance in
>   Free software is also all about helping others help you, which is a
>   difficult but interesting skill to nurture.
> 
> 2. FLOSS maintainance is more about investing than reimbursing.  Of
>   course, you may have to literally suffer when you need to do some
>   boring refactoring and dependencies management... but sometimes you
>   are excited by the challenge of redoing things in a better way, and
>   seeing this move as an investment to find yourself in the "prudent"
>   quadrant again.
> 
> That's the way I would argue that free software maintainance is NOT
> boring.
> 
> What would be yours in your field?
> 
> I strongly believe that we need to tell a different *story* about
> maintainance - and actually a million ones.
> 
> -- 
> Bastien
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