4 ms·

What a wonderful story. It all comes down to risk and reward. Would Northrup go all 'agiley' and get this done quickly? Sure if you paid them Time and Materi

What a wonderful story. It all comes down to risk and reward. Would Northrup go all 'agiley' and get this done quickly? Sure if you paid them Time and Material for the work and let them off the hook for any operational failures. No-one wants to do the work for 5% profit. No-one wants to hear the USAF want compensation when your program gives them a wrong answer and you lose a plane. So, we write a spec, and all agree. The we do a design, and all agree, Then we deliver and requirements have changed. The nature of the world we live in.

w8rbt 8y ago
When theory meets reality, requirements change. We thought this approach would work, and our research suggested it would. Then the real world came along.
- Nexxxeh 8y ago
  No plan survives first contact with the enemy?
  - tabtab 8y ago
    The more general version: "No plan survives first contact with reality." Somebody once also said that planning is still very useful even if the plan changes later because it helps those involved prepare for and understand the changes better when they do come.
  - mlb_hn 8y ago
    Sounds like more to do with not taking battlefield conditions/training into consideration. When push comes to shove, if you give people cool tech, unless it's easy to mindlessly pick up and use they won't use it. When I was in, I had boxes and boxes of crap that was on the books that we never used (and didn't know how to use but had to inventory), then the stuff we actually used.
  - bogle 8y ago
    "Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson
jacques_chester 8y ago
For what it's worth, Pivotal Labs bills on a time & materials basis. But we're not billing to create software, we're billing to help you learn how to build it yourself -- and to teach your own to do the same. Disclosure: I work for Pivotal in R&D.
weq 8y ago
Risk IS ALL it comes down to. Risk and who the the big-wigs have lunch with. Is the company big enough to sue when something screws up? Tick! i worked on software like this as a contractor for ausDoD. The same shitty companies who were big enough to sue would get awarded contracts over and over again even though nothing they ever delivered was on time, budget or worked. Accenture didnt even have programmers, they were hire buisness grads and give them crash courses on writing software. so whatever was delivered, would need another billion dollar project to replace it. why? its a massive bureaucracy, where everyone is covering everyone elses ass, everyone is fighting for budgets that they will do anything to protect. 90% famine until the last month, when its a feast and all the desicions get made, because if they dont spend it, they loose it. The reason why this is changing is not because its a light-bulb moment, its because its taken this long for the people up the chain to backed into a corner. Eric Smitch isnt the first person to think of this, his the first person with high enough clout to get it done (on a micro-level). suffice to say, working in such a environment is toxic for your career in software development. unless u want to work on these secret networks all your life, on the same software, maintaining it, its just a dead end. Want to use that new web tech? Nup. The SoE takes years to update, you still need to support IE8 for the next decade.

w8rbt 8y ago

When theory meets reality, requirements change. We thought this approach would work, and our research suggested it would. Then the real world came along.

Nexxxeh 8y ago
No plan survives first contact with the enemy?
- tabtab 8y ago
  The more general version: "No plan survives first contact with reality." Somebody once also said that planning is still very useful even if the plan changes later because it helps those involved prepare for and understand the changes better when they do come.
- mlb_hn 8y ago
  Sounds like more to do with not taking battlefield conditions/training into consideration. When push comes to shove, if you give people cool tech, unless it's easy to mindlessly pick up and use they won't use it. When I was in, I had boxes and boxes of crap that was on the books that we never used (and didn't know how to use but had to inventory), then the stuff we actually used.
- bogle 8y ago
  "Everyone has a plan 'till they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

jacques_chester 8y ago

For what it's worth, Pivotal Labs bills on a time & materials basis. But we're not billing to create software, we're billing to help you learn how to build it yourself -- and to teach your own to do the same. Disclosure: I work for Pivotal in R&D.

weq 8y ago

Risk IS ALL it comes down to. Risk and who the the big-wigs have lunch with. Is the company big enough to sue when something screws up? Tick! i worked on software like this as a contractor for ausDoD. The same shitty companies who were big enough to sue would get awarded contracts over and over again even though nothing they ever delivered was on time, budget or worked. Accenture didnt even have programmers, they were hire buisness grads and give them crash courses on writing software. so whatever was delivered, would need another billion dollar project to replace it. why? its a massive bureaucracy, where everyone is covering everyone elses ass, everyone is fighting for budgets that they will do anything to protect. 90% famine until the last month, when its a feast and all the desicions get made, because if they dont spend it, they loose it. The reason why this is changing is not because its a light-bulb moment, its because its taken this long for the people up the chain to backed into a corner. Eric Smitch isnt the first person to think of this, his the first person with high enough clout to get it done (on a micro-level). suffice to say, working in such a environment is toxic for your career in software development. unless u want to work on these secret networks all your life, on the same software, maintaining it, its just a dead end. Want to use that new web tech? Nup. The SoE takes years to update, you still need to support IE8 for the next decade.