Skip to main content

Software is Magic!

“We need a piece of software”… “ABRACADABRA”… “Et voilà, votre software est prêt*”… A perfect Software is up and running in no time! Is this possible? Till now, I haven’t seen this in custom development projects, specially that most of the projects I worked in varied between medium and large sizes projects (we’ll talk about projects’ sizes in details later). The majority of clients believe that Software is Magic, they think that developers just dream about the program code and then it comes to life with no effort… We all wish we can reach this stage, but unfortunately, the production of new software still takes time, effort and money…

Software is maturing… People are not

SoftwareIsMagicI remember when I was a kid and I started learning programming, I invented a language of my own and I used it to write my diary. The language was simply a set of symbols very similar to the Latin character set. People around me thought “She is writing Computer”, this is the exact sentence they used to describe the weird thing I was doing though this language had nothing to do with computers or programming. People always tend to rely on the easiest explanation for the things they can’t understand… they didn’t understand my symbol language and they didn’t understand computers… so they concluded that I was writing Computer!

I also remember that in one of the UAT sessions for a certain project, users requested to remove a specific field, then we moved to the next screen in same demo session, the same field was there, which is normal of course. Users were angry as the field was still there!! Users believe that their thoughts and requests should be applied in Software immediately just because it’s Software!

Till now, many people don’t know how to deal with Software, they still believe that computers are magic boxes that only magicians can deal with them to produce their artifacts. They think that Software people are the Experts… They have to be expert in everything, and they have to know everything… and of course, they should develop new programs in no time and with no bugs… They should also produce applications with additional features capable of performing what users will think about in the future!

Software from Inside

NoMagicLampSoftware people are not magicians or gymnasts… They learn and make mistakes like normal people… Software is not tangible and cannot be ruled or weighted… It’s art manufacturing, but usually people look at the end result without thinking about how we reached it and the effort it took to develop such Software. They don’t understand that no 2 projects are the same, they don’t realize that we always try to improve time, quality, performance and cost.

Software is not about occultism or lamp rubbing, it’s a work that needs effort and it is normal to be a continuously improving and developing field.

*(French): Here you are, your software is ready.

Labels:

Comments

BLUE said…
“Et voilà, votre software est prêt*...TO7FA :D
April 15, 2011 at 11:12 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle of Tactics

Sometimes referred to as the Triangle of Horror… where the PM tries his best to maintain his balance while walking on the very thin project rope between this triangle and the Project Constraints Triangle (time, cost & scope). The triangle sides represent: The Team, The Client and The Management Every side of this triangle is obsessed by the sole idea that the other two sides want him dead, i.e. the team thinks that the client and the top management want him dead and vice versa. Usually a good PM gets lost while trying to maintain this triangle in good shape to keep all parties satisfied and happy while making them think they are his first and only priority to get out what is needed from them for the sake of the project. From my perspective, this is a much harder balance to keep rather than maintaining and managing the Project Constraints Triangle… It highly depends on people, their culture, maturity level, and on the PM’s ability to understand this and deal with it in a ...
4 comments
Read more

I am a Project Manager

I am a Project Manager and I love my job… I am a project Manager and I love doing my work! I am nothing more but a Project Manager amongst many others. I got married to my work (not job) after a great love story which started from early childhood ( coming soon ). I started my career as a Software Developer in the late 90s, then held many positions in the field of Software Development, some were promotions and some were kind of additional assignments due to my performance. Among the positions I held are Developer, Team Leader, Project Manager, Project Leader, Senior Project Manager, Senior Project Leader, Program Manager, Business Analyst… though I was dreaming about becoming an Architect! But seriously the job I loved the most is Project Management. The things I hated the most in my early years were politics and economics/finance, which both became the core of my daily work for some years now! 94% of my experience was built by working in Software Houses as a vendor/provider and ...
4 comments
Read more

RPM Technique

I once used a very weird technique with my team to get things done in a short duration in a project that was very far away from being on schedule… For a while I’ve been asking my team for their progress, following up heavily and on daily basis, staying late with them in the office and sometimes staying till the next morning (online from home), trying to dig deeper by developing and testing with them…. And still we were very late in achieving any of our internal milestones… By time, I was empathizing them and I was trying my best to reduce the effect of the pressure under which they were put for a long time. We started a weekly game competition with some funny yet work-related rules, amongst which was “ each member in a sub-team should finish his work before the day of the competition ”… it went fine for about 3 weeks, then the situation became worse… and we all stopped participating in the competition… I then tried another technique… I started buying them either lunch or dinner in ...
4 comments
Read more