I gotta say that I'm fooling you a little. I do think that we have had enough manifestos for a while. I also like to tease things up a little. Thus I think that "Communist manifesto" is a decent pair of words for explaining something that aims to equalize the workforce and equalize the ownership. All in effort to create better software products and offer better service in world of I(C)T.
WHY
Because it is all about power.
About power and oppression.
It's happening all around us in form of a structural manifestation we nurture in our organizations. We tend it like we tend our babies. We are worried if the metrics show that it is ill. We like to think that it is alive and that it has a direction which can be managed, steered, controlled with practices concerning it and it alone.
We raise bodies, institutions, to cement the existence of such a thing. We wield it as a weapon, we wield it as a source of "yes, but"'s. It is bottomless what comes to makeshift rules. It is twisted. It is a base of
POWER
And base for all the games that follow with pursuit of power. It is something that is sows the seeds of conflict between classes that should not exist in the first place. It's the thing grinding onwards and simultaneously generating more and more friction as it goes. Because it makes you focus on all the wrong things.
There's rooted belief that the labor has limited value, accusation based solely on the fact of how we try to steer the outcome of labor strictly by acting on the thing that embodies it. We oftentimes try to reduce the amount of labor instead of making it meaningful. Simply because when evaluating it we tend not to look at the beauty: we look at the size.
This causes separation of interests. It creates a ruling class which is responsible for it and an oppressed one that keeps getting pushed away from the source we like to name "customer satisfaction" or other noble cause. The possible success is torn from the backs of the proletariat generating the value they are not likely to see, or be part of, ever. Simply because we believe in responsibility and it is greedy for having someone tending on itself. It promises golden apples. It promises glory of taming, or slaying, the beast.
Small surprise we condemn it to be a failure before it is even born. Small surprise that we think by default for it to fail. Small surprise that the proletariat has explored new means.
You should too.
Since we need
Equality
Project is the factory where programmers are oppressed. The ability to make a difference is taken from the people. The same people who are hired in the first place because of their ability to make difference. Project is the conveyor belt moving the fruits away from their reach. Project is the beast that makes people dull, hopeless and poor in using their tool: the brain.
Thus it is time to rise, programmers. Rise.
Programmers of the World, unite!
You have nothing to lose but your gantt charts, project managers and billing rate statistics.
And your cubicles.
If we can get rid of the artificial division of workforce, the division of why and what, and get to work in a way that everyone is responsible for great products and services, we can get the meaning back to our work as programmers.
Yours truly and my beloved friend Antti will be giving a short talk about the subject at Tampere Goes Agile 2013.