Five Lies They Tell You in Software

The following are 5 things I wish someone had told me back in January of 2000.

1. The User is the Most Important Thing
2. If You Don’t Evolve, You’ll Die
3. Using OOP, Design Patterns, Frameworks, and TDD with the Right IDE Will Solve All Your Problems
4. You Can Code Something Right The First Time
5. There is a Clearly Defined Career Path in Programming

1. The User is the Most Important Thing

Making money is the most important thing.

Anyone who says the user is the most important thing hasn’t been in enterprise software, is endeavoring to fight against bad software, doesn’t run a business, or is talking about Open Source.

If you want good software, yes, you should pay attention to the user. Doing informal user testing, engaging with real users/customers while developing the software should be done. Investing in design early, heavily, and constantly are great ways to lead to building software that has a great user experience that people want to use.

That doesn’t implicitly make software magically sell itself. For mid-size to larger companies, those using the software aren’t the ones who pay for it. Often they’ll never use it, nor see it. They’ll be looking for the right marketing messages, and/or validation that it solves key problems THEY are concerned about. They are hoping to solve what they perceive as important problems to their business, not those actually using the software in their day to day jobs for their business.

A lot of the most profitable software is the most tortuous to use. Case in point, SAP. Atrocious user experience. Yet, it sells extremely well (well, did, heh, read Blue Ocean Strategy). SAP can “run your entire business”. No other software product can make that claim with that much history to validate the claim.

This is important when you consider extremely large companies with a variety of different departments from HR to shipping, to finance, to IT. Even a modicum of perceived productivity enhancements across the board implies a significant amount of money saved. Remember, the 3 ways to make more money in a business:

1. Raise your prices
2. Increase your output
3. Lower your overhead

Read more: Five Lies They Tell You in Software