4 ms·

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main pr

The main problem here is that houses and software have wildly different marginal costs It is "a" problem, I'll even admit a major one, but it's not the main problem. The main problem is the expectation of continual customization and improvement at the input of the customer. Imagine if houses were built by you contracting with the developer, and after the initial blueprint and plans were agreed to, every two or 4 weeks you came back with requests to do new things like "add a basement bathroom", or "push out the back another 5 feet and add a glass skylight there for a sunroom", or "change the roof tiling to something 30% heavier". Even without the regulatory hurdles and permits, nothing would get built as a sheer matter of physics. Blueprints and architecturally sound structures take some basic customer requests at the outset, and then make dozens of important, non-easily reversible technical decisions known to an expert to be required to support those requests. You can't just add on new customer-desired trappings without vastly compromising the quality of those assumptions for the original design. But that is the situation in modern "agile" software development, and why selling it is so weird - because nothing else we'd say requires professional skill is built this way, and the real profit comes from annual recurring revenue - not a one time sale. Even wedding cakes have limits to change after the initial tiers are baked.

nradov 5y ago
Talk to any general contractor who does high-end home remodeling work. Some customers literally do come in with extensive weekly change requests, sometimes even more extreme than moving an interior wall or adding a skylight. This isn't necessarily a problem; it's a hassle but gives the contractor an opportunity to charge a lot more than the original price quote.
zeptonaut22 5y ago
Our lenses are probably influenced heavily by what kind of software we work on (which I admittedly didn't dive into at all on the article). I work primarily on B2C software, whereas it sounds like you probably work on the B2B software. It seems like consumers tend to mostly accept the platforms as they are whereas businesses feel (perhaps rightfully) entitled to ask for changes in the software they use. Each have pros and cons, but the marginal cost of B2C software does seem a lot lower than B2B due to the expectations in service.
shuntress 5y ago
Homes & buildings tend to be built in a way that allows any reasonably skilled professional to quickly determine a reasonable way to handle new work without any input from the original builder.
musingsole 5y ago
I wish my house had an on-going development agreement. Instead, I have to find skilled labor and negotiate the work every time I want to change something! Which leads me to often changing it myself and ending up with a worse result for it! Also, that relationship is pretty much what you can get for several months when commissioning a house in a subdevelopment or similar. Every month or week, you come by to have another conversation on a different set of customization options.
scott_s 5y ago
As others point out, that does happen sometimes with homes. There's a British tv show, Grand Designs, where it happens constantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Designs But, in support of your point, it usually does cause the builds to be over-budget and behind schedule.
wpietri 5y ago
I know somebody who used to work for a custom home builder; they did high-end primary and vacation homes. I promise you that many of their customers had approximately equivalent desires. What the homebuilder had was a well-honed process for channeling and managing those expectations. We can have that in software too if we want it and work for it. But it requires building a ton of alignment among customer service, sales, design, construction, and executive staff. Everybody who talks to the customer has to know what to say and how to direct requests. Everybody needs to know what they can say yes to easily and what has to get estimated, approved, and charged. But that in turn requires extremely skilled and disciplined management, something our industry is not oversupplied with. The Agile movement gave us tools to make that work (CI, CD, good testing practices, refactoring), but that only works in a particular envelope of management competence. Outside of that, it's GIGO.

nradov 5y ago

Talk to any general contractor who does high-end home remodeling work. Some customers literally do come in with extensive weekly change requests, sometimes even more extreme than moving an interior wall or adding a skylight. This isn't necessarily a problem; it's a hassle but gives the contractor an opportunity to charge a lot more than the original price quote.

zeptonaut22 5y ago

Our lenses are probably influenced heavily by what kind of software we work on (which I admittedly didn't dive into at all on the article). I work primarily on B2C software, whereas it sounds like you probably work on the B2B software. It seems like consumers tend to mostly accept the platforms as they are whereas businesses feel (perhaps rightfully) entitled to ask for changes in the software they use. Each have pros and cons, but the marginal cost of B2C software does seem a lot lower than B2B due to the expectations in service.

shuntress 5y ago

Homes & buildings tend to be built in a way that allows any reasonably skilled professional to quickly determine a reasonable way to handle new work without any input from the original builder.

musingsole 5y ago

I wish my house had an on-going development agreement. Instead, I have to find skilled labor and negotiate the work every time I want to change something! Which leads me to often changing it myself and ending up with a worse result for it! Also, that relationship is pretty much what you can get for several months when commissioning a house in a subdevelopment or similar. Every month or week, you come by to have another conversation on a different set of customization options.

scott_s 5y ago

As others point out, that does happen sometimes with homes. There's a British tv show, Grand Designs, where it happens constantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Designs But, in support of your point, it usually does cause the builds to be over-budget and behind schedule.

wpietri 5y ago

I know somebody who used to work for a custom home builder; they did high-end primary and vacation homes. I promise you that many of their customers had approximately equivalent desires. What the homebuilder had was a well-honed process for channeling and managing those expectations. We can have that in software too if we want it and work for it. But it requires building a ton of alignment among customer service, sales, design, construction, and executive staff. Everybody who talks to the customer has to know what to say and how to direct requests. Everybody needs to know what they can say yes to easily and what has to get estimated, approved, and charged. But that in turn requires extremely skilled and disciplined management, something our industry is not oversupplied with. The Agile movement gave us tools to make that work (CI, CD, good testing practices, refactoring), but that only works in a particular envelope of management competence. Outside of that, it's GIGO.