Pass the blame …

Tuesday 19 January 2010 - Filed under Random Observation

An interesting observation about the state of the union. Generally if something goes wrong with software development, defects are recorded. These are tracked and metrics are built off of how bad well the code is written. I’m sure at some level management decides how good a particular team or group of programmers performs based on these metrics.

However, the problems with development are rarely ever code related issues. Generally the logic is sound enough with the possibility of code not being able to handle bad data, or the error handling is not robust enough. All in all, the code is generally good. We aren’t building some complex protein folding application. It’s just processing of data and displaying it. The bulk of the issues come from not building what was desired in the first place. The requirements are not sound, or complete, or correct. They are not written in a means that makes it easy for the developer to build what has been requested. Now why aren’t business analysts or project managers subject to the same scrutiny as developers? A developer can build code absolutely to spec, but if it is not exactly what was desired by the end user, a defect was logged …. and it all falls on the shoulders of the developer.

2010-01-19  »  bobble