How To Make Software Projects Fail

Bob Abooey writes: "SoftwareMarketSolution has an interesting interview of Joel Spolsky, of Joel on Software fame. Joel, a former programmer at Microsoft, discusses some of the reasons he thinks some very popular software companies or projects fail, including Netscape, Lotus 123, Borland, etc." This interview brings out some mild boiler-room stories which sound like they could be the basis of a good book, along the lines of Soul of a New Machine .

Comments

How To Make Software Projects Fail:

[Skyshadow]

Step 1: Hire my boss (God, please hire him away!).
Step 2: Put him in charge of software development.
Step 3: Do nothing as priorities change weekly and deadlines slip away.
Step 4: Do nothing to stem exodus of clued-in employees to less-screwed companies.
Step 5: Force remaining employees to work 15 hour days. Provide subtle reminders that there's a recession out there.
Step 6: Do nothing as even non-clued-in employees flee.
Step 7: Hire a sweatshop in China to crank out code; present this sound like a good idea.

There, that was pretty easy. And, to be honest, everything beyond Step 1 pretty much happens on its own.

Re:How To Make Software Projects Fail:

[DataSquid]

Ah, the true sign of a clueless boss: A non-AC post about how clueless your boss is, with no fear he'll read /. and find it ;)

why are we listening to this guy?

[deander2]

Hold on, this man worked at Microsoft from 1991 to 1994. He led the Excel team. He led the VB team. This was win16. Excel is great now, but do you remember how much it sucked before office 95? And who the heck used VB for 3.1?

Even better! he wrote the Juno e-mail application. Believe me, this was no fine engineering here. Why does he know better then anyone other Tom, Dick or Harry what makes software project tick?

Re:Good point

[jdcook]

I couldn't agree more. In a similar vein, I removed the turn signals from my car. I get .0000047% improved performance and, after all, what good are signals? I know where I'm going.