When we here about writing software for money and in the same breath that this can be done without knowing the cost of that effort - fixing the cost simply transfers the uncertainty to the number of capabilities and the duration - I'm reminded of our daughter coming home from High School one day.
Dad we learned something today in our economics class. What's that dear? There is no such thing as free. Yep I say, someone has to pay.
Some have spoken about these two books as being old school and no longer applicable in our agile paradigm. Well like our daughter learned in her economics class - someone has to pay.
- Someone has to pay of the exploring of options.
- Someone has to pay for experimenting to discover the requirements.
- Someone has to pay for the programming paradigm.
- Someone has to pay for the unfilled capabilities when the deliverable date arrives and they're not ready for release.
Someone Has To Pay
Follow the money, when ever there is an idea that doesn't make sense. See what the motivation is for making suggestions - if there are actually suggestions - to see where the money comes from and where it goes.
If you're not connected to the money in some way, you're labor and someone else is making the decisions. If you're tasked with making decisions or what to participate in the decision making process - in a for profit business - it's required that you follow the money. Because every decision made in those for profit firms are informed by the cost of the that decision, the savings or costs that result from the decision.
We must be focused on the people aspects of writing software for money, simply because software is not a captial intensive process, it's a labor intensive process. We're not going to replace people with machines.
But those people need to get paid. Paid from the revenue from the products. Or if there is not revenue, from the bank account filled from the investors.
Follow the Money
Anyine suggesting otherwise is not on the business side of writing software for money.
