MIS41020 - They Write the Right Stuff. Fast Company.

Module - Design, Development and Creativity

Class or Article - Article

Lesson or Name - Fishman, C. (1996) They Write the Right Stuff. Fast Company.

Additional Info - N/A

Precis

They write the right stuff .Fast Company. by Fishman is an interesting insight in to the involvement of IT and Systems in the launching of a multibillion dollar space shuttle with passengers aboard. The start of the article provides the reader with the magnitude of how much the IT Systems are relied upon and in turn the code that supports those systems. This sentence alone by Fishman is highlighting the enormity of the task the IT Systems carry out "Four identical machines, running identical software, pull information from thousands of sensors, make hundreds of milli-second decisions, vote on every decision, check with each other 250 times a second". As we continue to read we begin to understand the people and the world behind this System and code. They are a team of 260 men and women, they are world renoned and  have a coveted level 5 ranking of Federal Governments Software Engineering Institute. To consider the quality of the work this team provide Fishman presents the reader with "Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors. Commercial programs of equivalent complexity would have 5,000 errors." . This kind of attention to detail is unheard of in the commercial world. The team are a team of older professionals who work in a stress free environment, work 8 to 5 and who implement rigorous processes for their work. Their outputs need to be second to none and this team and their system deliver, haveing cut their own error rate by 90% from the time they were heralded world class. They imply a system that does not rely upon any one person. It could be thought that this kind of development and rigor stifle creativity and it does to a certain degree but I believe in the documentation they produce and the consideration put in to change requests is where the creativity happens so that there is no margin for error in development. These are a very creative and innovative bunch when you consider the context and environment these people work in, but they are perfectionists in build, which when only observed from this angle makes it look potentially like a very sterile environment.

Reflection

When reading this article it is easy to overlook the severity in what this group of people are building. At its core this group of men and women are building the brains behind a 4billion dollar machine to ensure it is a success and that it does not impact the lives of those onboard.

They either succeed or fail. If they succeed they succeed but if they fail they will fail spectacularly and in worst cases with the most fatal price to pay in human life.

There are many industries who require this level of development, attention and success rate such as the developers and manufactures of pacemakers or ABS braking systems.

This pursuit of perfection is not idealistic it is necessity. I really like this insight in to the finer detail and rigor of the IT Development lifecycle as it is at opposing sides to that of enterprise, businesses and start-ups who are in a race to be first to the market. But also their magnitude of failure is not comparable to the lockhead martin team.

While coding for perfection is a necessity it is not in all industries and I believe this is a simple case of "Horse for Course' in the sense that there are different levels and styles needed depending on the outcome and in this it changes the characteristics of a project and their outcome.

Although I believe developing and coding for the perfect outcome or optimal design is admirable and something I would advocate it is not something I could advocate in business knowing the importance of first mover advantage and path to scale. Where the liability is not so large or detrimental the pursuit of perfection can be done through refactoring or rebuilding at a latter date, for now it would be build it, package it and ship it. But if I have 4billion dollars and 12 lives on the line I would be more of the opinion of take your time, get it right, double check it, test it, simulate it and then put in to production.

Also I never knew that a system managed the whole launch proceedure for space shuttle launch in order to remove human error and emotion. It is pretty amazing in my opinion and this is a reading that oepned my eyes and I really enjoyed.

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