 Jerry Weinberg has always loved to create computer systems and programs. He's a programmer through and through. And he has never stopped programming; he's still at it. When one domain has been exhausted of interesting (i.e. hard) problems, he's moved on to another until he reached domains where the problems are very hard, very compelling. There he continues to do requirements, analysis, design, code, and test to this day. Those still very interesting problem domains are himself, others, and organizations.
As software engineers and managers, we are all too well aware of the many "bugs" in organizations. How does one approach the necessary bug fixes and system re-writes? Consider the following approach: Model organizations as software systems composed of many processors (people), functions (what people do), and data (what people know). But organizations are huge systems. To push the analogy, the number of lines of code in a detailed model of an organization would be greater than the total lines of code ever written (think of modeling each of the human beings in the organization and all the interactions between them).
Jerry is author or co-author of several hundred articles and more than 30 books. His earliest published work was on operating systems and programming languages, but the 1971 publication of The Psychology of Computer Programming is considered by many the beginning of the study of software engineering as human behavior. His subsequent works have been an elaboration of many of the software engineering topics raised in that book, through all phases of the software life-cycle, including defining problems and requirements, analysis and design, testing and measurement, as well as management.
He has written on the role of consultants, of programmers, technical leaders, and managers. To many, he is best known for his leadership workshops, such as "System Effectiveness Management (SEM)," "Problem Solving Leadership," and the "Congruent Leadership Change-Shop".
"After more than 50 years working with computers, I've learned a couple of things, but I still can't make sense out of most of it. Most of all, I've discovered that people are at the bottom of just about every problem–but I think I knew that when I was little, then got talked out of it somewhere along the way. I've worked hard at relearning this lesson, and learning how to do something about it. While educating myself, I learned a second principle: I'm the "people" at the bottom of most of my problems."
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