The Future Of Software Development - Is Ken Schwaber Right?

We live in a world that is driven by software. It has become one of the world’s most successful and fastest growing economies. Companies like Facebook and Google have become one of the worlds largest earning companies. Almost whole of humanity is relying on some type of software to an extent.

Why is this?

Because of the demand! In the past decade the tech industry grew a lot slower. Of course, it is still developing and growing, but compared to the 80’s and 90’s, progress has slowed down. Our phones got smaller, and then after a while bigger again. We got touch screens, instead of one, we put 5 processors in our computers. In reality this is not progress. There wasn’t a revolutionary invention for a long time (just remember VHS, DVD, Flash Drives…).

But software is something else. With software, there is no limits. The software development industry has been rapidly growing. Companies like HP are now pulling other projects to be able to invest in software. This is all happening due to an increasingly larger demand for new products. The customers want better, smarter products each day and the industry has been struggling to conform with their needs for a while now. As Marc Anderson put it: Software is eating the world. Tweet

So where is this all leading us?

With the higher demand for software came a larger supply as well. Everyone wants a piece of the cake. But with larger supply, the quality dropped. This is due to the fact that for a while it was more important to be the fastest out there, not the best. Wrap it up and send it out and sacrifice quality in order to do it. I think this is one of the main reasons Ken Schwaber rolled out Scrum in the first place.

“Scrum facilitates control through frequent, regular inspection and adaptation of transparent software functionality. Transparency means the software is ready. It can either be immediately deployed or built upon without regression. It has no technical debt. Transparency mandates modern engineering practices and tools, and application of enlightened value-driven management.”

Most developers don’t think in this sense. Most developers are burdened by the word deadline. And bigger the company was, more mediocre it got and more technical debt it carried.

Just take a moment and think about this: In a world where governments, infrastructures and organizations rely heavily on software, is mediocrity really something you want? Tweet

What to do now?

Ken, in his edgy fashion, thinks that a software profession governing body is needed. A full standardisation and regulation of software development. We need to ask : Is this really something software developers want? Some suit and tie politician sucking the creativity out of their work?

There is a need to change! To start thinking Agile. Tweet

It’s not enough to just send it out there and say: We’ll work out the kinks eventually… In order to keep software development from the eminent implications of bureaucracy both results and quality are needed. The demand must be met, needs can not outmatch the skills.

Either something will be done about it, or not. Eather way, it is up to developers to decide who will lead them into the future.