Break Up the Programming Groups!

As a highly frustrated customer of in-house programming groups in large corporations, research institutes and universities over the years, I have come to the conclusion that the only viable solution is to break them up.

The concept of setting up a central programming group to assist the Engineering or Research or Management Science groups makes theoretical management sense. After all, there are economies of scale to be had from load smoothing, from technically proficient supervision, and from the exchange of technical information among group members. Yet, my experience and that of many of my colleagues has shown that it doesn't really work that way in real life.