Do you know why, as IT professional, we have such a bad reputation? Because we don’t fail.
We continuously deploy solutions just a bit late, almost with all the desired capabilities, that works in most cases for some time.
It’s just after few weeks that everything start becoming covered by cracks, and after few months we need a “crash recovery program”.
With other kind of business, it’s harder ‘having success’ in such a foolish way: a machine tool needs a certain setup time and work time to do his machining. ‘Compressing’ time is almost impossible, failure is more evident (and often more accepted).
That’s way we should fail more often, and have a better definition of success.
PierG
Subscribe
2 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 10, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Michael
I’m working for the largest Telecom in my coutry. The situation when failure is a “succes with some problems” (problems that last for couple weeks if months, problems which can destroy whole company) is so evident… In my opinion, unfortunately both sides are interested in such “transition”. Business people want to hide their problems with requirements definition and problems with management of the busines (organizational) side of teh project.
IT people have a natural tendency to “excuse” And, we must admit, the arguments are serious: complicated enviroment, additional tests, problems with vendors etc etc.
But is this a true? In a small software house it was evident that we have a problem – simply “no protocol, no invoice, no cash” situation…
Thios is rather a problem of corporate culture.
I think, that if there is a problem with “managerial courage and integrity” there always will be problem with “disappearing failures”. This is not a problem with IT. This is a problem of corporate culture which promotes corporate animals.
September 10, 2007 at 11:22 pm
thebox
This time, for once, I don’t think I agree.
There are very well known examples of dramatic failures, sometimes with literally “deadly” consequences (think about Therac25, for example ==> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TheracTwentyFive ). We don’t need these kinds of failure.
I get your point, though.