There's a big change coming up with my product, cutting down the investment into development down by a third. With that decision, the big discussion that puzzled me is around software maintenance:
I found myself telling a story yesterday that resonated well.
Imagine you bought a brand new car, straight out of the factory. It's all shiny, and just sits there in the parking lot looking beautiful. You don't need to drive it (you can), and none of the use really does much harm to it that you could see.
It sits there, throughout the year, open to weather conditions and people passing by with the bikes just barely too close to scratch your car. First it looks just dirty. Later, some rust creeps in. And rust is devious, because if you don't take it out, it will spread more rapidly.
Before rust, you will experience the winter conditions. You don't shovel out the snow, you won't even get into the car. The car is still there, but not quite as accessible as you would like.
You need to maintain that car, why would you think you don't need to maintain software? None of the things you invest in stays the same over periods of time. And the weather conditions in the case of software are particularly heavy, accruing maintenance ends up with expensive one-time maintenance. Some people would say that at that point you're likely to be in the point of rather just buying a new car.
What do you mean you need 2 people just to keep it running without adding anything to it?There's a big group of people who look at software as if it is something to build that after it was built can just be used without any maintenance. They feel puzzled on the whole concept of maintenance. What is maintenance anyway? It works now, why would it not work later on? You don't change it, how could it break?
I found myself telling a story yesterday that resonated well.
Imagine you bought a brand new car, straight out of the factory. It's all shiny, and just sits there in the parking lot looking beautiful. You don't need to drive it (you can), and none of the use really does much harm to it that you could see.
It sits there, throughout the year, open to weather conditions and people passing by with the bikes just barely too close to scratch your car. First it looks just dirty. Later, some rust creeps in. And rust is devious, because if you don't take it out, it will spread more rapidly.
Before rust, you will experience the winter conditions. You don't shovel out the snow, you won't even get into the car. The car is still there, but not quite as accessible as you would like.
You need to maintain that car, why would you think you don't need to maintain software? None of the things you invest in stays the same over periods of time. And the weather conditions in the case of software are particularly heavy, accruing maintenance ends up with expensive one-time maintenance. Some people would say that at that point you're likely to be in the point of rather just buying a new car.
