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Sunday, September 14, 2003 ( 2:11 PM ) Steve In the Dallas Morning News business section, several IT experts talked about the importance of system admin jobs, that companies don’t like to outsource admin jobs. I’ve worked at places like this, where they think hardware drives software development. But, really, could they be any more confused? Not even if they were in the land of Oz. The customer is what’s important, and software is what provides value to your customers. Here’s two commands for the people pretending to manage IT departments: 1. Find the yellow brick road and start following it. At the end of the road there's a man. Ask him for a brain. 2. Then, take a class in marketing. # ( 2:11 PM ) Steve It has been said that only 1 out of 10 software developers are able to make a difference when it comes to software design. I call this the “Design Mind”--some people just know how to build things. Instead of tying software into knots, they create flexible architectures. In many instances, developers are too focused on technology, if they studied other disciplines they would learn concepts that improve their designs. I ran across one of these concepts while reading the book “Creating Customer Evangalist.” The book describes a concept called bite-sized chunks--bite-sized chunks are small, easily consumed servings from your product portfolio. Case stories in the book provide a conceptual framework that allows developers to see the whole picture, What’s more, bite-sized chunks compliment object-oriented development. You see, creativity occurs when we are able to form associations between different disciplines. When you apply this concept in software development, it forces developers to focus on flexibility and your customers. This creates the type of software we learned about in computer science classes--components that can be used independently or in any combination. Who would have thought that marketing could drive sound design concepts into software development. # |
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