The Swiss Army manual says: When the map and the terrain disagree, trust the terrain. However, in software industry, there seems to be an unending effort to make sure the terrain is retrofitted so that it looks much more like the map in hand ! So, I have modified the Swiss Army saying to suit the reality in the software development community as: When the real-life and bookish process definition differs, it clearly shows you have not understood the bookish definition, and hence you must change the real-life until it looks like the bookish definition and then trust the bookish definition.
Statutory Health Warning: Reading this blog post further could be bad for health, especially for those who love the process vocabulary more than the process intent, see the means more clearly than the ends and anyday favor the established processes of the day even to solve newer class of problems that clearly require fresh thinking lest they end up shaking the establishment. Author takes no material responsibility for anyone proceeeding from this point beyond and suffering serious health problems because of the radical views presented in this blog.
The conventional definition, popular understanding and state of practice of Software Quality is seriously flawed. They have created a very lopsided perspective that adherence to certain standards is Software Quality, howsoever hard- or soft-baked those standards be. On one hand of the rather colorful spectrum are the die-hard process zealots who won’t stop short of anything less than an ISO, CMMi or the likes and on the other end of the spectrum are the neo-rebels who believe anything Waterfall is bad and unless anything is Agilized, it ain’t good enough. On the innumerable discussion boards that I subscribe and listen to, completely petrified to speak up lest be asked my credentials to back up my anti-establishment views, I find more productive hours being lost on what should be the exact definition of a ‘product owner’, what should an ‘iteration zero’ be better known as, and whether you pass the Nokia test or not. I find the neo-rebels falling in the same honeytrap that they once so detested and fought tooth and nail - compliance over creativity. I see more mail threads getting fatter and longer because there are linguistic differences that probably should be settled so that practitioner’s camp can have peace after all, but where is the Customer in all this ?
Continue reading ‘What is your Software Development Religion today ? And where does the Customer fit in that ?’ »
