Structurally Broken
Structurally Broken
“When you have a system in which structural failure is embedded, nothing short of structural change will significantly improve it.”
~ George Monbiot
He was talking about the UK’s transport infrastructure, but I’ve long believed the world’s “Software Industry” system is structurally broken, too. Even the very name “software industry” signals dysfunction. (Of course, this observation applies to many industries, not just software).
Software
“The great Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt used to tell his students, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!” Every marketer we know agrees with Levitt’s insight. Yet these same people segment their markets by type of drill and by price point; they measure market share of drills, not holes; and they benchmark the features and functions of their drill, not their hole, against those of rivals.”
We’ve heard time and again that people (customers, the general public) don’t want software, they want the utility that software can bring. Yet we call our industry the software industry, condemning us to build and deliver stuff that our customers don’t want. Granted, “that cat’s outa da bag” as Lt Columbo would say. Renaming the whole industry as something like “the pain solving industry” or the “attending to folks’ needs” industry ain’t going to happen any time soon, if ever.
Industry
Why do we describe the <name to be argued over> field as an “industry” anyways? Images of factories and satanic mills and slave plantations and the Apple “1984” advertisement come to mind. “Art” is rarely labelled as an industry, for example.
Structural Change
So what kind of structural change or changes might bring about some improvements?
#NoSoftware points the way. Analogous to the Paris 15-minute city idea (by implication, #NoCars).
And until customers stop asking for drills (software) and begin explicitly asking for holes (their needs met) we’ll likely not see much change.
What kind of structural changes can you envisage, suggest?
– Bob
Further Reading
Beyond Command And Control – A Book Review ~ Think Different blog post
Think Different