Robby on Rails

Some people have habits that are hard to break. Mine is that I tend to pick up books off of our bookshelf…okay…90% of the books are my fiances… but I’ll take one and just open it and start reading. The problem with this is that I really don’t make (or find) enough time to start at the beginning and finish each book. I often end up just opening up to a random section and reading a few pages until I realize that I’m totally lost or until I find something interesting to think more about. Occasionally… I finish the book.

One such book that I am reading is Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, which was written in 1973. The topic of the book? “Economics as if People Mattered.”

The other day I read a section about developing nations, which has always been a topic of interest to me. I’m going to take a step away from the topic of the book and extract something that the author said that caught my interest.

“We tend to think of development, not in terms of evolution, but in terms of creation.”

When I read this… I know that this isn’t referencing application development but development of third-world nations… however it got me thinking. Is it our tendency to try and plan things the whole way through so that we can follow through and create the definitive and ideal solution in one try? This is exactly how some development processes work. Gather requirements, develop one monolithic plan, and implement it. This process can take a half of a year to several… depending on the size of the company. Perhaps there is very little difference between the three year project and the three month, except the smaller team and lapse of time. Could it be that when we admit that we know that requirements will change over time and if we take an iterative approach that we will be better prepared and more open to change?

...and perhaps the following quote could be applied to the topic of good usability...

“An entirely new system of thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily attention to goods. . . .” - E.F. Schumacher

Development should be an evolutionary process… and real people should be where we focus our attention to.

...what are your thoughts?