It is a shame! 2

[bshankaran]

It is a shame and a lot of stress on we developers that this Industry does not operate under any process and quality guideline - esp. IT Consulting!

Say what???

Esp. Design is most neglected and the downtime is so high because of that! Lots of money is wasted too ... and the stress levels are unusually high because of that!

Any comments!

Thanks!
BSN!

 

[sleew]

Talking about MS? Sleew
Compaq & Microsoft TS
sleew@infosky.net

 

[rycamor]

I think this is the biggest problem in modern industry. Every project I have been involved in asked the developers to cut corners in internal design robustness, simply to add features. The business people making these decisions always say "fine, get the features in, and then we will fix the internals", but by the time the first round of features are in, they want to start on the second round of features, rather than fixing the internals. And in the end, the cost is much higher, because eventually you have a very large mess to fix.

I as a freelance developer, have been placed on the hot spot between the contracting company and the end user so many times that I refuse any more projects, unless there will be some serious planned time spent on specifications. By this I mean the end user/customer has to be willing to take the time to explain exactly what they want and why, rather than hope you will disappear into a cave, and magically emerge with exactly what they want. (telepathy, anyone?) Generally the approach to software is to ask someone to hack something together quickly, then complain when it doesn't work quite right, then force the developers to squeeze a few bug fixes in, and a few new features, and try it again, and so on... So the project never gets started right, and in the end, becomes very stressful to the developer, as he/she struggles to correct serious design deficiencies without rewriting the software (What!?! You're doing this part again!?! That's double billing... robbery!!!).

Also, I think this problem comes from a lack of true education in IT professionals. There is an attitude in the IT industry that all you need to know are "products", and that "theory", or "concepts" are a waste of time, best left to the university researchers. A more eloquent explanation of this is found at one of my favorite websites:

http://www.pgro.uk7.net/fp2e.htm

(now, the author uses his point to also push a somewhat anti-capitalist stance, which I don't fully agree with, but the point about the failure of modern education is well-made). So, instead of businesses looking for people with strong conceptual skills, and ability to look beyond their narrow range of experience, you see companies looking to hire a Cisco person, or an Oracle person, or a InterDev developer. Knowledge/certification in specific vendor product are the main requirements, rather than overall competence and understanding of their field. Just look at current job listings in the IT industry.

And no one wants to take existing stuff and make it better. They all want new, new, new... It's not cool to say you are fixing your software so it runs better, since your users already have more features than they need, and would rather just have something that doesn't crash. No, that's too boring. We have to "rework" our software every year, so the users have to learn new features, and deal with new bugs, rather than just a better version of what they already have. -------------------------------------------

"Now, this might cause some discomfort..."
(

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51274,00.html)

 

[pharcyder]

It's true what you say, rycamor. But as you say, do not only blame the companies, but the developers, too.
If they would insist in your mentioned "planned time",
the end product would be much better in quality and
would even more meet the expectations.

documentation and planning should be half of the time needed to develop a software. (Or even more ?)

or what do you think ?

greets from germany,
pharcyder

 

[edfair]

Not just IT. The auto industry in America got the message the hard way twice in the last 30 years.
The banks got the message the hard way several years ago, the reverbs still shaking the industry.
The dot.coms are falling by the wayside.
And now the financial services and the accounting services are learning the hard truth.
Unfortunately, the public is the ultimate victim of its own greed and stupidity.
And I recognise that I'm part of the public. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[rycamor]

You are absolutely right, pharcyder, and I readily admit that I have been at fault in this area too. (Otherwise, how could I complain bitterly about my experiences ;-)).

And, to expand on what edfair said, the modern IT industry is very similar to the Detroit, USA auto manufactures of the 1970s. They kept building bigger and bigger cars, with more features, and more problems, and more "planned obsolescence", ignoring the true problems that lay before them. They were all implicitly agreeing with each other not to fix the problems, so they were totally unprepared for any real competition, when the European and Japanese automakers came in.

The problem now is that software is different from manufacturing. It is less easy to define what is good and what is bad. Also, it relies almost completely on marketing, rather than actual user experience, because most users are unable to take the time to really compare one piece of software from another, or one OS from another. So, most users get their concept of good software from three places: 1. what they are familiar with, 2. what their friends show them, and 3. what the IT press/media says. For most people, 1 and 2 can't really provide true evaluation, because they both have the same limitations, while the media (3) is generally in the pockets of the "big 3" software vendors.

And, as I said before, rather than work on making things right, It seems like every year the industry just tries to cover over past mistakes with another layer of features and work-arounds.

Now, the real shame is that we custom application developers have to build upon this shaky foundation, whenever building specific projects for this or that business. So right from the start, we are working at a disadvantage. The standards are bad from the ground up!! See my comments on this at

http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=995

(by Rick Morris). -------------------------------------------

"Now, this might cause some discomfort..."
(

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,51274,00.html)

 

[SteveTheGeek]

I've heard software development compared to building a house - no one would tell a builder: "Build me a house that'll keep two adults and two kids comfortable for the minimum cost and time." There absolutely has to be time and money spent in the beginning for architects to design it. Next time someone is suggesting that you as a developer can retreat into a cave and come out with a quality software product, ask them "ranch, colonial, or cape cod?"
-Steve