Technology Optimism

At the time of massive cutoffs, transition of positions to low-cost centers and the sour smell of pessimism in the air -- I feel the spirit of Technology Optimism.

During the good times, the finest people with the brilliant ideas are sucked into the big corporations, tempted by nice salaries and all other perks. In many cases what they do in such positions is to work hard on projects that are later being shutdown. Let's admit, the big corporations are good at raising the money and selling the product, but when it comes to innovation, best innovative trick is to find the right startup to acquire. And this goes also for great innovative companies like google (GoogleMaps, GoogleVoice and many more are based on external acquisitions, see Wikipedia - List of acquisitions by Google).

There is a great advantage in a crisis, being a tool in reforming the market back to an efficient structure. We need more innovation and much more efficient companies.

Many brilliant people who have been back into the market lately are fed up working for giant dinosaurs, and start working on their own new startups. It may be hard at this point to raise the initial capital, but these startups are thin and efficient. And in a year or two we will start seeing the results with new technology domains that we couldn't imagine before.

Software Factories

Before the industrial revolution most of the products were made by hand, crafted. Is software manufacturing today more like a confection (ready made clothing) or more like "haute couture"?

The term "Software Factory" was created for describing the possibility of getting software requirements and sending them into a "factory" for manufecturing. (Do not mix that with a Microsoft technology with a similar name).

The challenge is that with software, customer needs may be very complicated. Can we just send the requirements into a "Software Factory" and get it done? (This in some way contradicts the idea of constant communication embedded in Agile Development.)

Think of airport control system that needs to address all kind of airports and equipment. Think of banking software that shall address different banks and communicate with all sorts of external interfaces. Can we create modules that are generic enough so that customization for specific customer needs can be done by cheap work force and without too much complications and investment?

Most software projects cannot be cloned. There is no customer that resembles another, requirements are different and the "physical" legacy environment is not the same.

Closets are also not all the same. Each customer may have different specific requirements. Nevertheless, most carpenters manage to stay scalable and address specific requirements by setting standards, such as several available sizes (you can order a closet of 2.0 or 2.4 meter height, however, 3.0 meter height would be a special order, would be processed uniquely and priced accordingly) and several available woods.

To achieve the ability of creating software as in "Software Factory", we shall:

1. Narrow the options and alternatives. State clearly what can be built as a standard and what is a special order.
   
2. Externalize a clear API
   
3. Insist on always getting clear requirements before starting (did you see a carpenter starting to work on a closet before having all measurements?)
   
4. Have core modules, easy to customize for very specific needs, with hooks and plug-ins for adding specific functionality
   
5. Create a very strict and close way of customizing the product, allowing it to be done by cheap work force. Always prefer customization techniques which require less thinking. Customization shall not be art, it shall be very technical and strict, preferably with clear instructions.
   
6. Both the core module and the customizable product shall be easily testable, each on its own.

I had a debate recently on whether the preferred technique for rendering raw data into HTML is JSP with Taglibs or XSL. Though XSL is very powerful and can do anything with raw XML at hand, I argue that a set of strict Taglibs with the instruction not to use Java code inside JSP makes it much easier to make this task in the mode of "Software Factory". In oppose to XSL, which is in some way an "art", using a strict set of predefined Taglibs is something that is much more narrowed, cannot handle all cases and special requirements, but can certainly provide most needs and most importantly, can be done by almost anyone, given clear requirements.

We are already in a period in which most organizations cannot afford having their software be "haute couture", they must settle on confection, ready-made, with some adaptations. Most software companies who would still manufecture their organizational software products as "haute couture" would not survive, unless in very specific and unique domains. When software becomes a commodity, like a cheap chip, the only way to produce it is in a "Software Factory" model.