Love the One You re With

Love the One You're With

The software industry has a long history of trying and ultimately rejecting "one size fits all" methodologies. These methodologies are Con II software approaches, and they fail outside of narrowly defined areas of applicability predictably precisely because they are Con II. The world of software is far too varied to be addressed by a single set of rules.

For example, compare the practices you would use to develop a heart pacemaker control to those you would use to develop a video store management program. If a software malfunction caused you to lose one DVD out of 1,000, it might affect the store's profitability by a fraction of a percent, but the impact would be negligible. If a malfunction caused one pacemaker out of 1,000 to fail, however, you've got a real problem. Generally speaking, products that are widely distributed need to be developed more carefully than products that are narrowly distributed. Products whose reliability is important need to be developed more carefully than products whose reliability doesn't much matter.

These different kinds of software require different development practices. Practices that would be considered to be overly rigorous, bureaucratic, and cumbersome for a video store management software might be considered irresponsibly quick and dirty or reckless for an embedded pacemaker control. The Con III developer will use different practices to develop a heart pacemaker control than to develop an inventory tracking system for videos. The Con II developer will attempt to apply a one-size-fits-all methodology to both projects with the likelihood that the methodology won't work particularly well for either one.