The fact that some choice is good doesn’t necessarily mean that more choice is better.
Barry Schwartz, “The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less”
I find it fascinating that today, in our personal lives or in business, we need so many things that we did not have before. I personally never thought I needed that much, but when I look back at when I started my career, I realize that today compared to then, I do.
Lately, with the advances that have been made around internet shopping, it gets even worse. I have never been a big shopper, but now I find myself buying all kinds of neat things that I (most of the time) really don’t need. Why is that?
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Previously in this series I wrote that the principles of agile software development are more important than the development process (see Agile Software Development: It’s not a process). Consequently there isn’t just one correct way to do software development – the approach must be based on a careful examination of the needs of each project.
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“If you don’t stand for something you’ll fall for anything!”
That was one of my Dad’s favorite expressions and I think it’s wise; I try to live by it every day. It applies nicely to software development too where I put it in the following terms:
“If you don’t have a vision for your product you’ll clutter it with lots of unnecessary features!”
I’m sure that makes you think of some bad examples, eh? Me too!
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Once upon a time, agile software development was revolutionary and cellphones were for making cellphone calls, but those times are long gone. Agile is a mainstream best-practice and if you aren’t applying it then I must brand you a laggard. But agile has changed in the last decade, and not always for the better.
Back in 2001 it was generally recognized that the principles behind agile were its most important characteristic, but nowadays there is an unhelpful emphasis on its mechanics. The phrase “an agile process” is often heard even though one of those principles states that agile values “individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.
Or to put it another way:
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Choosing the technology for a long-term project is a risky business – this season’s hottest software may be horribly out of fashion a year or two from now. That’s a big problem if you’ve built your supply chain on it; no-one wants to upgrade their software platform very often.
It’s a lot easier with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. If you were building a new enterprise application today you’d choose a web architecture for maximum flexibility in deployment (i.e. servers either local or in the cloud, clients on any kind of device running a browser). On the server you’d probably choose to build on a software ecosystem like Java since it runs on any hardware and has wide industry support. But a lot of enterprise software vendors chose something else when they began their long-term development projects and are left regretting that now.
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TECSYS develops innovative software products.
Yes, we are a provider of supply chain solutions (and hey, Your Supply Chain Matters!), but underpinning all of that is a team of software development professionals who build our products with the latest technologies and tools. And you, dear blog reader / TECSYS customer / supply chain professional, while assuredly you are interested in our solutions in areas such as demand planning and healthcare point-of-use, I thought you might also want to read something that appeals to your inner software geek!
Because we’re all software geeks these days – software is everywhere. Or as the internet visionary Marc Andreessen says, “Software is eating the world”. His thesis is that the ubiquity of software products and mobile devices has brought our society to a tipping point that will lead to profound change in business, education and healthcare. (Check out this fascinating interview with Andreesen.) The products we build at TECSYS are part of the process that he describes. So in recognition of the significance of software to all we do, I thought I’d tell you some more about our software – how it’s made, and why it’s made that way.
In the next few posts I’m going to write about about the technology and design decisions we are making at TECSYS and the rationale behind these decisions; I’ll describe how we go about developing software and the principles we use to guide our work; and I’ll give you some insights in to the challenges we face and how we overcome them. You will see that our clients and the users of our products are key players in our software development, and you’ll learn how you can influence that development. You’ll also gain a perspective on software development which can help you assess and evaluate all of the software you interact with, whatever its origin.
Software is eating the world; let TECSYS feed your inner software geek.
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