Building the Wrong Thing

"The biggest cause of failure in software-intensive systems is not technical failure; it's building the wrong thing." - Leading Lean Software Development

(Presumably that assumes a certain minimal level of technical expertise.)

I spend a lot of time thinking about how to reduce the errors (bugs) in our software. We spend a big percentage of development time on fixing errors. Just to be clear, most of these errors are small internal issues that aren't even noticed by the majority of users. I think as far as our users are concerned, our quality control is good.

But if we could reduce those errors, we would have more time to get stuff done.

But ... if the biggest cause of failure is building the wrong thing, then having more time won't necessarily help. Or at least it's not the best way to improve. By this line of thinking, we'd be better off working on building the right thing, rather than less errors. (Of course, you still want to reduce errors as well.)

It reminds me of the old saying "if it doesn't have to work, you can make it as small/fast/etc. as you like", if you interpret "work" as "building the right thing".

Of course the trick is how to do better at building the right thing. In many ways that's tougher than reducing errors, and that's tough enough.

If you're not involved in the software business at this level, this talk of "building the right thing" may strike you as strange. Why wouldn't you build the right thing? The problem is that no one knows what the "right thing" is. And no, the customers don't know either. As Ford said, "If I'd asked my customers what they wanted, they'd have said a faster horse."

None of this is really new, but it's good to be reminded. Definitely food for thought.