Sunday, June 17, 2007
Seven New Classic Software Development Mistakes
Steve McConnell, author of classic software development books Code Complete and Rapid Development, has a blog entitled "10X Softare Development." The latest post is entitled, "Classic Mistakes Updated," on a potential additions to the list of classic software development mistakes which continue to be made throughout the industry.
If you've never heard of these classic mistakes before (and way too many people in management NEVER HAVE), he's got the full content of that chapter from Rapid Development available in a link (which unfortunately requires registration). If you've worked as a software developer (or development manager) for any size of organization before - possibly even as a lone-wolf developer - you've probably run into / made these mistakes before. They include such gems as:
* Adding people to a late project
* "Silver Bullet" syndrome
* Contractor Failure
* Wasted time during the "fuzzy" front end
* Shortchanged quality assurance
* Push-me, pull-me negotiation (where management / the customer agrees to extend a schedule on a late project in exchange for the addition of new features which will, of course, make it even later...)
Perhaps a new edition of Rapid Development is in the making, but he's now proposed seven new more classic mistakes for the list:
* Confusing estimates with targets
* Excessive multi-tasking
* Assuming global development has a negligible impact on total effort
* Unclear project vision
* Trusting the map more than the terrain
* Outsourcing to reduce cost
* Letting a team go dark
For a better explanation of what these new mistakes entail, take the developer survey linked to by the article. I can say that at a recent job we were victim of at least five of these seven mistakes. And management was baffled as to why the developers predicted from the very beginning that the project was doomed!
As an interesting side-note: A lot has been said about how the videogame development is less mature in their software practices than most of the rest of software development industry. That may be true - I know at one game company I worked for (Acclaim) this was certainly the case. However, I can't say that the difference was that remarkable. A job I worked at not-too-long-ago was an amazingly fast-growth company on its way to making a billion-a-year (US$), which utterly and completely mismanaged its IT department and threw nearly every one of those classic mistakes our way. Repeatedly. A practice which originated from upper management that utterly refused to listen to their professional IT management team when told that their expectations were unreasonable. Their response was to sack the management team and put in others who were better capable of "managing up" and telling them what they wanted to hear.
However, I worked for a company that sold software as a business, and their practices - while far from perfect - were much more mature and productive. And they made fewer of those classic mistakes.
So while the videogame development business has a long way to go, from my (admittedly extremely limited) sampling of experience, I wouldn't say its that far off from its more "serious" bretheren.
(Vaguely) related pretenses that I know what I'm talking about.
* Hey, You Got Your QA In My Programming!
* Jet Moto Memories
* Programming Tip: Comment First
* How Focus Can Ruin Your Business
Read or Post Comments on the Forum
* Assuming global development has a negligible impact on total effort
* Unclear project vision
* Trusting the map more than the terrain
* Outsourcing to reduce cost
* Letting a team go dark
For a better explanation of what these new mistakes entail, take the developer survey linked to by the article. I can say that at a recent job we were victim of at least five of these seven mistakes. And management was baffled as to why the developers predicted from the very beginning that the project was doomed!
As an interesting side-note: A lot has been said about how the videogame development is less mature in their software practices than most of the rest of software development industry. That may be true - I know at one game company I worked for (Acclaim) this was certainly the case. However, I can't say that the difference was that remarkable. A job I worked at not-too-long-ago was an amazingly fast-growth company on its way to making a billion-a-year (US$), which utterly and completely mismanaged its IT department and threw nearly every one of those classic mistakes our way. Repeatedly. A practice which originated from upper management that utterly refused to listen to their professional IT management team when told that their expectations were unreasonable. Their response was to sack the management team and put in others who were better capable of "managing up" and telling them what they wanted to hear.
However, I worked for a company that sold software as a business, and their practices - while far from perfect - were much more mature and productive. And they made fewer of those classic mistakes.
So while the videogame development business has a long way to go, from my (admittedly extremely limited) sampling of experience, I wouldn't say its that far off from its more "serious" bretheren.
(Vaguely) related pretenses that I know what I'm talking about.
* Hey, You Got Your QA In My Programming!
* Jet Moto Memories
* Programming Tip: Comment First
* How Focus Can Ruin Your Business
Read or Post Comments on the Forum
Labels: Biz, programming
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:22 PM (Permalink)
