Robert Scoble links to this Scott Bellware essay which expresses concerns about Microsoft’s use of “personas” when it thinks about its developer customers. The story goes that Microsoft teams categorize each developer as a Mort, Elvis, or Einstein. I won’t go into an explanation of what these personas are–because I’ll probably get it wrong. I don’t have experience working with them and I’d probably miss important nuances here and there.
The article is concerned that this trio of personas over-simplifies the developer community and leads people to miss what developers are really doing. Could be. I’m guessing that Microsoft feels, however, that these personas represent their three largest pool of developer customers. I don’t know.
Personally, I don’t take offense at these personas. Call me what you will. I agree, though, that from the outside the names are a little odd and the focus a little narrow, but oh well.
Over the years I’ve seen a bunch of different classification systems. Nothing has stuck with me. I usually think more pragmatically. I often pool developers as embedded developers, system/core developers, product developers, tool builders, API designers, or developers of internally used products. My clustering is a bit more complex than this. There’s scale to consider–are there lots of customers or just a few? are there lots of deployments or just a few? Yeah, this is a boring way to think about things.
To me, classifying individual developers is only a part of the puzzle. Most great development is not accomplished by a single individual, but rather a group of developers working together. I don’t have any clever classification system for groups of developers, but I do often liken these developer teams to bands of musicians. There are the pop groups, the studio artists, the classical performers, the performance artists, and so on. Most groups don’t last. Most don’t make a hit. Some hit once. And only a very few have a hit more than once. Some push the envelope and get us to think. Some simply make our days a little more pleasurable. Some are in it for the money and fame. Some are over hyped. Some do it for the artistry. How the group dynamics play out can make all the difference and quite often sets the stage as to what the future might bring.