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(I spent 2 years in the sector, and my employers didn't want to create complex software either. But they did want to make money - optimizing things to take less

(I spent 2 years in the sector, and my employers didn't want to create complex software either. But they did want to make money - optimizing things to take less consulting time, as you say, wasn't always a top priority.) It's not necessarily conscious or nefarious, but the pattern is clear. You can say you don't want to do this, and mean it, but actions speak louder than words, and the incentives are compelling.

petervandijck 16y ago
And as a sidenote, don't get me started on the folly of "modeling workflows". That's one of the things about enterprise software that makes me avoid it like the plague as much as I can.
justincormack 16y ago
Somehow the priorities seem to end up this way. Incentives will out. Problem is the competition dont build that stuff in, so you end up sliding down in comparison, being seen as expensive for bad reasons, not for real reasons that add value, like doing manual upgrades... Then its downhill.
abalashov 16y ago
optimizing things to take less consulting time, as you say, wasn't always a top priority. It only becomes a top priority if you're trying to do more with the same consulting time. With straight hourly billing multiplied by people involved, as is common in enterprise, that's never an issue--in fact, in many cases quite the opposite. However, lower down the totem pole of gullibility lie people who feel burned by the enterprise model and insist on fixed-bid projects, which shifts the risk onto the consultancy. Now the incentives are to get the most done with the fewest people in the least time, at least if you have more work than you can handle. In this situation, automation, installers, scripting, etc. become a big win. There are other business-relevant incentives for this type of automation, of course. The biggest one I can think of is to make the deployment process even "stupider," thus theoretically allowing for the possibility of employing even cheaper people to perform it. The second biggest one is standardisation (removing individual customs and habits out of the install process), consistency, and reduction in human error. On a less directly economic level, some manual processes are so tedious that if you don't automate them, your employees will grow demoralised from having to do them over and over. Lord knows we've run into that one a lot. :-)

petervandijck 16y ago

And as a sidenote, don't get me started on the folly of "modeling workflows". That's one of the things about enterprise software that makes me avoid it like the plague as much as I can.

justincormack 16y ago

Somehow the priorities seem to end up this way. Incentives will out. Problem is the competition dont build that stuff in, so you end up sliding down in comparison, being seen as expensive for bad reasons, not for real reasons that add value, like doing manual upgrades... Then its downhill.

abalashov 16y ago

optimizing things to take less consulting time, as you say, wasn't always a top priority. It only becomes a top priority if you're trying to do more with the same consulting time. With straight hourly billing multiplied by people involved, as is common in enterprise, that's never an issue--in fact, in many cases quite the opposite. However, lower down the totem pole of gullibility lie people who feel burned by the enterprise model and insist on fixed-bid projects, which shifts the risk onto the consultancy. Now the incentives are to get the most done with the fewest people in the least time, at least if you have more work than you can handle. In this situation, automation, installers, scripting, etc. become a big win. There are other business-relevant incentives for this type of automation, of course. The biggest one I can think of is to make the deployment process even "stupider," thus theoretically allowing for the possibility of employing even cheaper people to perform it. The second biggest one is standardisation (removing individual customs and habits out of the install process), consistency, and reduction in human error. On a less directly economic level, some manual processes are so tedious that if you don't automate them, your employees will grow demoralised from having to do them over and over. Lord knows we've run into that one a lot. :-)