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.

Comments

BLUE said…
“Et voilà, votre software est prêt*...TO7FA :D

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 ...

The Bus Driver

They took some time to plan for the trip… They drew the road map, bought some food and beverages… and got equipped with the necessary tools… They were going to travel through the woods to draw the magnificent scenes which were observed by their neighbors early this year… This wasn’t their first trip together as a team, though they were all excited… The bus driver was in charge for making the big decision in the trip while taking care of the travellers’ team while of course driving the bus and communicating daily with his supervisor in the station. The map was clear, the weather was very well studied, though the bus driver expected to pass by some pitfalls in the road as there were some reparation in the way. He reported this to his supervisor and requested to take some more supplies just in case they have to camp one or two days more, but the supervisor refused “ the trip has to be completed on time and the painting should be ready for sale by the end of the week ” Anyways, ...

The Triangle is missing The Circle

By experience -the bad one of course- I discovered that the famous Project Management triangle is missing a very important containing circle… The Strategy Circle . The Strategy Circle is my simple explanation for many of the catastrophic situations projects end up with. I totally believe that this should not happen and that Strategy exists to set goals and directions for the benefit of organizations and accordingly for the benefit of projects and teams. Unfortunately, I witnessed many cases where it was exactly the opposite. I was an eye witness of the failure of many projects and sometimes companies because of misunderstanding the meaning of Strategy and how to use it to bring companies to success. Some companies bankrupted because of this! De-formation Effect The Strategy Circle is sometimes surrounding the Project Management triangle and thus imposing pressure on it and suppressing it and some other times it is pushing on the triangle from the inside and thus inflatin...