Todd Biske pushes back on the issues of incentives for reuse on my podcast covering Joe's blog post from last week. "The word in there that concerns me is 'incented.' Many advocates for reuse also recommend some form of incentive program. Clearly, incentives are a possible tool to leverage for behavior change, but we're much smarter than Pavlov's dogs. Sometimes, people get too focused on the incentive, and not Todd Biske pushes back on the issues of incentives for reuse on my podcast covering Joe’s blog post from last week. “The word in there that concerns me is ‘incented.’ Many advocates for reuse also recommend some form of incentive program. Clearly, incentives are a possible tool to leverage for behavior change, but we’re much smarter than Pavlov’s dogs. Sometimes, people get too focused on the incentive, and not enough on the behavior.” Ya know, he may have something there. In leading a company I often find that incentives are a double-edged sword, and wonder why they focus short term efforts, often at the expense of long term behavior change. However, it depends on the incentive. If the incentive is “do this or be fired,” that’s very different than “do this and we’ll pay you more.” Both work, but one works much better than the other. I suspect the answer for SOA is a bit of both. “Years ago, I was on a tiger team investigating what it would take to achieve reuse at our organization, and a co-worker would simply say, ‘Their incentive is that they get to keep their job.’ Too often, incentives focus on one-time behaviors, rather than on changes that we want to become normal behavior.” First off, “tiger team.” Somebody needs to kill that term now. Second, while I understand the argument Todd is making, I think you need to drive long-term behavior changes through clear leadership, with some incentives baked in there as well. I would say that you focus on why you’re moving in this direction, and not as much on what you’ll get. Good point Todd. Software Development