Title: Professionalism in Programming #11

A distant land comprised largely of pleasant hills, forests and grassland. However, running straight through the middle of it was a wide river. It wouldn't have been a particular problem had it not been for the fact that the inhabitants had built two important and prosperous towns, one on each bank.

The river made trading very inconvenient. Although the water was not particularly deep and could be waded though, they were a funny sort of people with very short legs and they didn't much like getting their armpits wet. Sherbet traders found that their goods tended to have dissolved away before they got to the other side. No one liked a fizzy river.

After years of finding new ways to dry out sherbet stained trousers they decided that something had to be done. A complex system of committees, meetings and steering groups were formed to devise a solution. Various schemes were proposed, with varying levels of success. The most impressive was by a group of not entirely practical people who took their inspiration from the local pigeon hunters. They devised intricate flying contraptions that propelled their occupant through the air at a high velocity using taut rubber bands and a small explosive charge. They were marketed well and caught on very quickly, before anyone had fully thought through the ramifications. Trade between the towns slowed dramatically for many months due to the number of broken legs and arms. The plaster makers became rich overnight.

Finally they settled on what seemed to be the best compromise. It was decided that they needed a bridge.

Intelligently the townsfolk decided not to build it themselves since none of them had the faintest idea how to do it. Besides, they were all still too tender and reliant on crutches to embark on such an arduous task.

A well-known bridge building company, BridgeCo was brought in to oversee the entire project. They would have shopped around more but both town mayors played golf with the BridgeCo executives. Little did the simple townsfolk realise what they were letting themselves in for - after all BridgeCo had plenty of construction experience and really seemed to know what they were talking about. Their business cards were in full colour and there were all sorts of combinations of letters after their names. Some of those letters weren't even in the alphabet. They had a low handicap and a generous tab at the golf club bar.

The town planners had something simple in mind when they engaged BridgeCo. But the elementary edifice they described to the BridgeCo marketers was rapidly turned into a monumental engineering feat that would be the talk of people for miles around (despite the fact that most of the surrounding countryside inhabitants were merely livestock). The townsfolk were sold on what BridgeCo eloquently described: an imposing suspension bridge, perfectly proportioned, with towers that could be seen for miles around. The marketing department at BridgeCo didn't come cheap but to the management they were worth it. Everyone was excited: the air was abuzz. They were sold the most impressive bridge that ever was, functional yet stunningly beautiful. Why should they have wanted anything less?

Twenty silver coins were given to BridgeCo up front with the promise of fifty more when the job was done. It was a lot of money, but the potential returns from the improved trading connections made it worthwhile. Belts were tightened. There were fewer hog roasts that year, and the bank managers walked around with even more solemn expressions on their faces.

Given a somewhat unrealistic product specification by the marketing department the BridgeCo designers sat down with a set of identical concerned frowns on their face. It simply wasn't possible to build what was promised for the price quoted. They drew design after design, tore parts up and started afresh. Local bar tenders' profits tripled and the rate of pencil sales soared. The designers worked long into the night and had unhappy wives and children.

The bridge designers took pride in their work. They wanted to do it properly, but it was a complex task. There were all sorts of trade-offs to be balanced. It was difficult to acquire suitable building materials in that region and the huge bridge towers weren't realistic unless a much deeper and more expensive foundation was available.

Having completed the design work to the best of their capabilities, the engineers handed the plans on to the construction crew.

Construction was scheduled to begin that winter, but since BridgeCo hadn't appreciated that winters in that part of the world saw a snowfall approximately 10 metres deep, work had to be postponed for months. This did explain why both towns were built on stilts, but it made a big impact on the plans - the grand opening ceremony was set back significantly. The caterers (who were hastily preparing for this event) had to find new ways to bide their time. There were freezers stocked full of slowly souring bridge-shaped canapés.

The construction crew did their best to implement the design. With management breathing down their necks (despite the fact it wasn't their fault that they started building late) they had to cut build time wherever possible, and costs had to be further reduced to pay off the tough late-delivery penalty clauses they had signed up for. Some of the "less necessary" supporting struts were omitted and cheaper (yet suitable) build materials were sought where possible. It was decided that painting the bridge pink was unnecessary and that the lighting was superfluous (no one needed to use the bridge at night, after all).

The work was long and the work was hard. It went well on the whole, except for a series of small setbacks caused by the local religious leaders inciting protests. They viewed the river as a god, and the bridge was considered an insult to their deity. It didn't take the army many missile salvos to clear away the protesters, but it took weeks to repair the damage to the superstructure. The third time this happened officials cured the problem by chaining all the preachers to their toilets.

The day of the grand opening was a beautiful sunny one. A huge ceremonial veil was patched together from every single tablecloth in the surrounding area (French polisher's takings began to pick up). Just prior to it's placing over the construction a quick test of the bridge was performed. When the third tester had plummeted through the middle of the bridge senior BridgeCo officials realised there was a serious problem and only hours to the launch party.

After the panic subsided some of the more experienced engineers were sent in to diagnose the problem. Given a few example failure cases they quickly discovered the root cause. It wasn't as if it was a big hole, just the size of two or three plump managers. The rapid solution was testimony to their ingenuity. They tied a number of the religious leaders together in bundles and glued them into the open space. The toilets situated midway along the bridge were an added bonus, although later on some were heard to remark that a little privacy would have been a huge improvement.

The bridge was duly opened with its spectacular ceremony. It was remembered for years to follow largely because no one expected a bridge to complain when it was walked on.

After the opening things didn't go exactly as planned. A series of events marred the early life of the bridge.

When a sherbet trader dropped a large bag of lemon sherbet in the middle of the bridge travellers kept slipping in it and hurting their elbows. BridgeCo rapidly devised a solution to the potential disaster and fitted the bridge with floor-level vacuum nozzles at equal distances along its edge. No one slipped in any more dropped sherbet but the astute noticed how many ladies' tights got pulled down mid-crossing by the airflow. Elastic makers enjoyed roaring trade with record profits.

Without paint the bridge weathered badly, but a year later this problem was fixed by BridgeCo wrapping it entirely in cling film, secured with duct tape. To prevent tears in this covering high heels were initially banned, however a later dictate ruled that the bridge had to be traversed bare foot. Chiropodist's fortunes turned for the better even if a number of the local cobblers declared bankruptcy.

Various other fixes and bits of maintenance work were applied until the bridge began to look a lot less elegant and a lot more philosophical. BridgeCo was able to charge for a lot of this reworking, in one case blaming the town planners for not foreseeing the problems associated with unplumbed toilets spilling raw sewage underfoot.

So the fateful bridge was completed late, cost twice as much money as necessary, and never fully met the people's needs. It was a symbol of discontent in the land until it was demolished in a freak nighttime golfing accident.

Not long after, they invented motorboats which were so much fun they never missed the bridge anyway. BridgeCo transitioned into making instruments of torture and now hold an unethical monopoly in most of the civilised wetlands thereabouts. The religious leaders choked on lemon sherbet.

It's all too easy to slag off modern software development. Yet we seem to deliver products that are ill planned, don't meet the users' true requirements, and that arrive far too late. Under analysis, it's often not even anyone in particular's fault. However, we still don't seem to manage software projects reliably. We've been doing this for years.

Like the townsfolk in the story, the end users are not really satisfied with what they get, but by the time they get it they have been conditioned to accept whatever comes. But how much of the problem was their fault in the first place?

What should our response to this be? Please reply.

Next time we'll look at some software development methodologies and see how they compare.