Making Making Manifesto

tl;dr Work towards more production-like feedback sooner

Engineers make stuff. Considerable thought goes into the stuff we make: designs, prototypes, focus groups, early testers, analytics, A/B tests. Engineers make something else, though, something that gets less thought. We make the making of stuff. There is no one right way to make something, which means someone has to decide how to make it. Making making is the decision(s) about how to make something.

Software engineers make making by choosing the order to implement parts of some whole. The largest programs are written one line at a time, but which line comes first and which line comes next? Those are making making decisions. We decide how and when we want feedback from our decisions. That is a making making decision. We decide when to automate repetitive tasks. That is a making making decision. We decide how and when to integrate the work of several people. That is a making making decision. We decide what to monitor, what to log, and when to interrupt our work with alerts. All of these are making making decisions.

Making making leverages engineering skill. One person can make hundreds or thousands of others more effective. Making making deserves some percentage of our engineering investment.

Making making has limits. Nobody really pays for making making, they pay for stuff. Few people beyond colleagues are going to applaud making making (unless you help many people). Making making can also become addictive, at which point the tools, frameworks, and automation created lose touch with the reality of making and become impediments to progress.

Read the rest at: The Making Making Manifesto

Originally published at tinyletter.com.