Saturday, September 10, 2005

Lean Cincinnati is Moving !

To get better Blogging facilities Lean Cincinnati is moving to


http://agiledna.com


Please reset your RSS feeds.

-Thanks

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Field of Dreams

In the last week, I've talked with two very smart, highly motivated programmers. Both are making plans to leave the Cincinnati area.

Why? Both say that there are no interesting programming projects going on here. All they see is old-style java and .NET projects that are missing the wave of new approaches.

And they feel that they would put their career at risk by staying here.

The questions we have been discussing on a local mailing list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/grow_cincy_soft/) are:

(1) Why are programmers leaving Cincinnati?
And (2) How can we keep and attract more?

If we conclude that they are leaving because Cincinnati companies are not offering them interesting projects, why is that??

Some say it is because Cincinnati is somehow "Conservative".
That doesn't answer anything really.
Is WalMart (which considers IT as part of their core competency) somehow "Liberal" ??
I don't think so!

It's not a about being "Conservative".
It's about seeing IT as either a competitive advantage or as a cost center to be minimized.

It's a fundamental VALUE choice that each company has to make.

And the question shifts to:
Why don't Cincinnati companies embrace technology as a competitive advantage?

If you see technology as a competitive advantage, and invest in it, the programmers will love to stay and work on the important projects.

ITS THAT SIMPLE.

If you see IT as a cost center to be minimized and out-sourced, then don't be surprised if the good programmers prefer to move away from Cincinnati and work for Google, or ThoughtWorks, or someplace that wants to us IT to MAKE money.

As they said in the movie "Field of Dreams"...
Build it and they will come.

- Mark
http://leansoftwarecincinnati.blogspot.com/