Comments
Re: Things people love, things people hate ...
@JohnBarnes:
I like your analogy...so apt in terms of how they relate.
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
@faryl:
I can never forget my early stage of the career during dot com times where we use to do absolutely what you explained - test in all possible browsers and deal with various things like cookies, server andsession related troubleshooting which use to take forever.
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
Not sure how other open source projects can follow suit because they don't have the same clout as Google does with Android.. but..
This is so true. But I can't stop thinking, they will be coming up with something before we even realize.
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
@faryl:
In total agreement with you. Coming from Microsoft background, I must say that Microsoft based projects are very easy to adapt and learning curve is pretty minimal.
faryl
9/30/2016 10:14:49 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
I did the same :)
And we had weekly roll-outs so we had to do the same test suites over and over. Not fun!
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
After design, gaining the engagement of all the players - through collaboration - is the net biggest hurdle. But those who cross that bridge have great opportunities.
@DHagar: Great points.
For excat same reason User Experience (UX) is gaining lot if importance. IT is totally into getting to know user' s need and develop something they want and like as opposed what IT can develop.
Re: Must also play well with hardware...
Good to know that. It wasn't fun then but feels good thinking about we did all that back then.
Michelle
9/30/2016 10:23:30 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Things people love, things people hate ...
@John I haven't heard that about divorce and open source. Do you think there's a way to make all parties mostly happy with things?
JohnBarnes
9/30/2016 11:31:09 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Things people love, things people hate ...
Michelle,
Sure. Either business gives up being business-like or developers stop acting like developers.
The thing that makes open source attractive to the development community is that they know that free and open collaboration and sharing makes tech work go fast, which means they can meet diverse business needs quickly and well. So from a business standpoint it makes a great deal of sense to give the developers what they almost all want (a few cranky hermits excepted).
But that undermines property, territoriality, zero-sum competition, and all the values business is built on. Many years ago when microcomputers, aka desktop machines, were first coming into widespread use in business, my consulting group sent a team of us to look at a large company that had allowed everyone to just bring devices from home; the place was about 1/3 each legacy CPM, command line DOS, and early Mac. A couple employees had cobbled up translator programs so you could move data between some of the machines on floppies (both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2) but it would lose all formatting going from one to the other. There were dozens of programs and applications all over the place doing all sorts of things, and no central data repository at all. But they were moving a lot of product (it was a consumer product reseller), growing like crazy, and doing all right.
Our report suggested creating an IT department and tasking it with slowly evolving toward a single system (I think Perfect Software, which at the time had CPM and DOS versions and had announced a Mac version that never happened). The employees were mostly good with it.
A VP who had probably been in that industry since the 1940s tossed our report and ordered a few hundred IBM PCs, and told everyone to be moved over to them in three months. He did not specify software, probably because he didn't quite know what it was. (His rationale was that he'd heard of IBM for years but not all these other companies) You may imagine how well that worked. BUT ... that's the culture that business people are still evolving away from: the senior guy makes a decision, everyone carries it out, and the whole firm rises or falls on the quality of those senior decisions.
"Don't think above your pay grade."
"Orders are orders."
"A bad decision executed immediately is better than a good decision too long delayed."
"The boss is not always right but he is always the boss."
"Nobody was ever fired for buying IBM"
Today's managers are a much better lot than that -- but that's the world they grew up in. I don't think they ever fully escape the nagging feeling that they should be "leading", i.e. issuing arbitrary commands that miraculously turn out right, rather than "managing", i.e. coping and facilitating while their team finds the best way by blundering ahead, correcting, and reblundering. And open systems crank up all their anxieties about not leading, because open systems can't be led and be open at the same time.
So it's kind of a failed romance. They loved the idea of more and better software faster and happier developers. But it means coping with a world where they don't get to do all that leading they were constantly told to do as young, junior managers. Kind of Barefoot in the Park or Dharma and Greg -- they knew it would be good for them, they knew they needed to loosen up and enjoy, but dammit, couldn't somebody do the dishes, or remember to iron the shirt, or just act responsible and obedient?
And, frankly, developers thought there would be money plus time and space to play, but it's turning out it's the same old deal where those are in conflict; it was great to be appreciated but how come the appreciation stopped as soon as the fun really started?
And that's my riff for the moment on the deteriorating romance that is open systems. I still think open systems will win out -- it's too effective not to -- but it will be a struggle, not a quick skip down the road to Emerald City.
DHagar
10/3/2016 4:53:05 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Things people love, things people hate ...
@JohnBarnes, excellent assessment of the current environment and I share your view that open source will ultimately find its way - through performance.
I further agree that IT decision makers are better than the past, but I still think there is a barrier in that there are limits to the capabilities of some to "architect" the solution they need, vs. purchase the latest "toys"; as you well point out. Unless we further develop the skills of IT to design the solutions that truly fit their needs, we will buy the latest toys.
Maybe those who get stuck with the toys that don't work will increasingly become obsolete - passed over by those who can deliver results.
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