No one understands they are killing projects

Features are to be implemented. At least, that’s the spirit of when designing by #Functional decomposition. But persuing functional decomposition essentially kills the project before the first programmer even sets their fingers to work.

But this is not jolly news. Software has been designed (and is being designed) this way. Telling all those senior architects and managers that what they actually have been doing is dooming their projects is borderline impossible because they surely do not want to hear these news.

Pre-bacteria doctors

Before bacteria was discovered, doctors would not wash their hands. Bacteria spread is actually highly lethal to an open wound on a person who’s trying to recover from some serious damage.

There was one doctor that noticed a correlation of washing hands and patients surviving. With enough assertions, this doctor concluded that there is something that we transfer with our hands that kills their patients.

This doctor spread the news and tried to convince other doctors that they are killing their patients from this lack of washing hands, with the argument that it’s almost malicious in the way they operate.

No doctor understood. They refused the fact. This became considered madness.

This doctor who made the discovery was stripped from being titled a doctor, and banned from ever practicing medicine.

References

• J. Löwy (January 27, 2021), “Righting Software - System Design” [Workshop], NDC London 2021.