#NoSoftware

I wrote a post some time ago about No Hashtags (hashtags on e.g. Twitter which use the #No… prefix). My tweets occasionally mention various #No… hashtags, including #NoEstimates, #NoTesting and #NoSoftware.

I’m thinking it’s about time I delved just a little into the #NoSoftware hashtag. Like most of my posts on Think Different, this one will be brief. #NoSoftware is a deep subject, upon which I could write a whole book, had I but the inclination (or demand).

To whet your appetite, and illustrate the possibilities of #NoSoftware, we need look no further than the story of Portsmouth City Council housing repairs, where an existing, expensive and inflexible IT system was switched off, replaced with manual controls, and only later some limited software support reintroduced, once the needs of all the Folks That Mattered had been fully understood and catered to.

Payback

Let’s start with the payback of #NoSoftware.

As Steve Jobs wrote:

“The way you get programmer productivity is not by increasing the lines of code per programmer per day. That doesn’t work. The way you get programmer productivity is by eliminating lines of code you have to write. The line of code that’s the fastest to write, that never breaks, that doesn’t need maintenance, is the line you never had to write.”

~ Steve Jobs

A pretty clear alignment with #NoSoftware (yes, I’m coming to that presently) wouldn’t you say?

Let’s just dissect that statement:

Eliminating lines of code we have to write

We’re not talking about writing denser code – cramming more functionality into fewer lines. Fewer lines of code means we’re done quicker, having spent less time, effort and money on the writing of code. That’s a saving in and of itself.

Never breaks

So the lines of code we don’t write means we don’t have to worry about their quality (no matter whether you use defect prevention or testing as your go-to strategy in that arena). More time, effort and money saved.

Doesn’t need maintenance

By maintenance here, I’m thinking about changes to the code occasioned by the changing needs over time of the Folks That Matter, or changes necessitated by changing technical environments. I’m not dwelling on remediation efforts (bug fixes to production code).

More Payback

But the payback of #NoSoftware doesn’t stop with the above aspects. In the bigger picture, it’s not just about writing fewer lines of code. It’s about eschewing software-based solutions more or less entirely in favour of considering the alternatives. More payback includes:

Happier customers

It’s an old saw that “folks don’t want an 8mm drill, they want an 8mm hole”. Similarly, folks almost universally don’t want software, they’re looking to have their needs met. And software for many of these folks has too many negative impacts to be their preferred option. Software is generally written to save (suppliers) costs, not to improve customers’ satisfaction. Most people hugely prefer to interact with other human beings, rather than a computer controlled by – generally lame and inflexible – software.

Opening the Door to Changing Thinking

Software systems as generally conceived, ordered and delivered institutionalise – or “lock-in” – the existing collective mindset. Once installed and paid for, the “sunk cost” fallacy undermines any possibility of changing the existing set of assumptions and beliefs about how the works works. In the vast majority of cases the software system locks the organisation even more tightly into its existing Command & Control (a.k.a. Analytic Mindset) ways of working.

#NoSoftware – Definition

When I use the #NoSoftware hashtag, I’m inviting folks to think again about what, often, are near-autonomic responses. In this case, the System One (cf Kahneman) response – “fast, instinctive, emotional, stereotypical, unconscious and automatic” – when faced with some needs of some Folks that Matter, to satisfy those needs with a software-based solution.

I guess some folks assume that I’m advocating zero software. A kind of Luddites’ heaven. This is not my position. In using the #NoSoftware hashtag, I’m basically saying

“Under some circumstances, maybe there are other, more effective means to meet folks’ needs than the default assumption/strategy that we have to do so via software”.

“How about we think about, talk about, and consider those various circumstances, and means?”

In this way, the #NoSoftware hashtag is a metaphor for

“Would you be willing to think again, and maybe join the search for more effective, relevant or alternative means of meeting the needs in question?”

Example

Some years past, I was working with a company that offered a software product to the corporate market. The product had been in the market for some years, and it was clear that one of the blockers to market penetration was the complexity of the problem and the challenges corporate customers faced in dealing with that complexity. The company chose to build more and more software into their product to help their customers handle the complexity. No one ever discussed the options of offering a consulting service and/or a managed service, using human expertise, to replace or augment their software product. Consequences were, customers remained challenged, and the company’s revenues suffered.

Blockers

As Upton Sinclair’s Dictum tells us:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

~ Upton Sinclair

How much more difficult, then, when it’s the revenues of a whole industry we’re calling into question. If the software industry changed tack and stopped writing software, what then? Financial ruin? World collapse?

There’s a multitude of smart people who currently waste much of their time – and lives – writing and delivering solutions to folks’ needs in the form of software. I suggest that to have this multitude refocus and retrain themselves to consider, and deliver, other forms of solution – solutions with less or no software – would make the world a better place for all the Folks that Matter. And “better”, as far as customers are concerned, would mean increased demand and more revenues for savvy suppliers.

Uptake

Like many of my invitations, I find #NoSoftware has few people willing to consider it as an alternative strategy to the status quo of just getting on with writing (more and more) software. I guess this signifies the general learned helplessness, and lack of engagement, autonomy and mastery, we find in most workplaces and employees today. So be it.

– Bob

Further Reading

Why Doctors Hate Their Computers – Atul Gawande
Forget your people – real leaders act on the system ~ John Seddon
Dangerous Enthusiasms: E-government, Computer Failure and Information Systems Development ~ Robin Gauld, Shaun Goldfinch