What Software is Made Of (2015)
3 points by n3t
3 points by n3t
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Good framing of the "clients are unrealistic" situation:
The problem is that, by controlling the purse strings, the client has the authority. And that puts in the client in a precarious psychological situation: they are very vulnerable to wishful thinking. The programmer has very little leverage to tell the client, no, we shouldn't plan on doing it that way, because it will probably cost you more money in the long term. Quite to the contrary, the programmer may be under pressure – say a competitive bid situation – to indulge and affirm the client's wishful thinking, to get the job at all.
Also, the practical conclusion is interesting:
Among people who make software professionally, there is not an assumption that a client and a programmer are sufficient between them to make well all the decisions that go into a software project. Among commercial producers of software it is common, if not conventional, for there to be other sorts of professional involved.
Then going to list people like UX, QA, SME, marketing.
In my data science days those people were often called SME's, subject matter experts. Ie the ones who actually know how to understand and solve the problems you're trying to automate. They can be anything from a surgeon to an accountant, they just work every day with the data you're trying to analyze and understand it on a level you're trying to capture with mathematics.