Improving Wetware

Because technology is never the issue

Magical Thinking

Posted by Pete McBreen 07 Jun 2011 at 22:12

There is a constant refrain that occurs whenever people try to achieve anything

There must be an easier way

We learn this lesson at an early age and never forget it. The toy problems we are “challenged” with while learning always have an easy solution. Sometimes the easy solution is non-obvious and hard to find, but there is always a trick that makes solving the problem easy.

Unfortunately the world does not work this way — but we want to be tricked into thinking that it does.

Some examples:

  • Finding the one food that will help the pounds melt away
  • A pill that will cure all diseases
  • The invisible hand of the market
  • Buying a CASE tool to improve code quality
  • Adopting Extreme Programming
  • Thinking that Requirements Traceability makes systems better

Whether we think of these as “Silver Bullets” or a “Technological Fix”, it seems that we are hardwired to seek out simple solutions. In part this could be because we are so good at pattern recognition that we see a pattern where none exists.

All of this makes progress in software development difficult, because collectively we don’t want to believe how hard it is to deliver reliable systems. There has to be an easier way …