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I came across an article that those of us in the software
business should pass along to our programmers: "How
software doesn't work" (Alan Joch, _Byte_, Dec. 1995,
p.49-60) This follows an article that appeared about a year
ago in Scientific American ("Software's Chronic Crisis",
other details not close at hand).
The articles show how software development fails, and how
you can minimize the risk of failure. The tie-in to tech.
writing is that lack of integrated quality control phases
and "creeping featuritis" (love that phrase!) are what most
often derail the development process; the latter is what
affects techwhirlers. Bring these articles to your
programmers or their project managers, and hopefully the
trickle-down effect will make your own life easier!
(Copyright disclaimer: Photocopying and distributing
copyrighted articles isn't legal, even though all of us do
it from time to time, so buy the whole magazine and send
that!)
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Disclaimer: If I didn't commit it in print in one of our
reports, it don't represent FERIC's opinion.
