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Most of the Time in Software Development, The World Doesn’t End
Software development hasn’t caused the world to end…yet
“Most of the time, the end of the world doesn’t happen.” Howard Marks
Problems on software projects can quickly get exaggerated to end of the world status. Most problems turn out to be minor issues that delay the project by a few days.
The larger the software project, the more emergencies and emergency meetings you have on a weekly a basis.
You Cannot Create Software Without Bugs, Problems and Mistakes, the law of probability causes things to go wrong. You cannot stop all problems but you can prepare and recover from them calmly.
Spoiler alert, software so far hasn’t caused the world to end but has caused project plans with no margin of safety to be changed.
Perspective
Most disasters need you to change your perspective, step back and have a long term view. The common view of software projects is driven by emotion, politics and group think.
In this talk at Google — The Great Minds of Investing | William Green | Talks at Google, William Green interview talks about John Templeton who was a great contrarian investor.
In 1939, the second world war as Germany is steaming through France with its Blitzkrieg tactics and the world is at war. The war crashes the American stock market and most investors can only see doom and gloom.
The stock price of companies on the Dow stock exchange are all crashing.
John Templeton looks at the market sees there are 104 stocks trading for less than a dollar a piece.
The common view is the world is at war, American could soon join, prospects are terrible, the world could end. Share prices and performance of companies are terrible.
Templeton steps back and views this with a bigger time line. In a longer timeline, this is a dip, but the world isn’t it going to end. After the first world war there followed a period of prosperity and optimism, as those countries rebuilt and grew (until the great depression in 1929).
