Wishful Thinking in Software Application Development
Jun 30, 2010

Software application is usually punctuated by deadlines. If all goes according to plan, deadlines are met on time and the application is released on the due date. However, all too often, the very first deadline is missed. It would be reasonable to expect that the original plan would then warrant a revision to ensure that the upcoming deadlines are met. Unfortunately, team managers can fall into a huge mental trap that has the power to jeopardize the entire project: wishful thinking.

Pretending that an unrealistic schedule can be overcome with hard work and luck.

Don't your developers always work hard? And since when was luck something you can count on? If the schedule requires superhuman effort from the get go, save yourself a world of headaches and revise it. It's better to turn down a project outright than to mislead a customer.

Eliminating quality control throughout development.

Are you thinking that you can save time by creating the different elements of the project separately, without coordinating them as you go along? You will actually add far more time to the end of the project--when all the bugs surface.

Excluding the customer from prototype changes.

If you've changed minor details since the last time you showed the customer the prototype, you owe it to your team and to the customer to get approval. Customers are notorious for not being able to clearly visualize what they want, so even if you explained what you were going to do, the customer may not raise objections until they see a visual.

Wishful thinking is seductive. It's like a dream that you don't want to wake up from. But the catastrophic results of wishful thinking are predictable: missed deadlines, angry customers, and burned-out developers.

The good news is, now that you know what to look for, you can nip wishful thinking in the bud. Stick to realistic schedules, integrated quality control, and ongoing customer sign off. And any time you catch yourself saying, "I'm not sure how we can make this happen, but it will probably work out in the end..." do yourself a favor and snap out of the dream.

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