Of all the ‘laws of software’ that I subscribe to, this one is one of the most fundamental, and unwavering.  I cannot find an exception to it, and years of experience reinforce it for me.  I can look at a chunk of source code, or an operations manual, or even a build script, and see the effects of the software development process used to create the artifact.

Process affects architecture.  If you use agile techniques, you will not only get your results in a different amount of time and features will appear in a different sequence than if you used iterative spiral techniques, but the software itself will have a different structure, different patterns, and different interfaces.

Just making an observation.  Probably not even a controversial one, but one that bears making. 

Software reflects the process that creates it. 

Corollary:

If you want to improve the quality of the software you produce (regardless of how you measure quality), you can change tools, and you can change information, and you can change training, to your heart’s content… but the big effects will come from changing the process.

By Nick Malik

Former CIO and present Strategic Architect, Nick Malik is a Seattle based business and technology advisor with over 30 years of professional experience in management, systems, and technology. He is the co-author of the influential paper "Perspectives on Enterprise Architecture" with Dr. Brian Cameron that effectively defined modern Enterprise Architecture practices, and he is frequent speaker at public gatherings on Enterprise Architecture and related topics. He coauthored a book on Visual Storytelling with Martin Sykes and Mark West titled "Stories That Move Mountains".

4 thoughts on “Software Reflects The Process That Creates It”
  1. Hi Udi,

    Thanks for the link.  I wasn’t aware of who had claimed credit for pointing this out.  This law predates my time in computing, that’s for sure.  It is somewhat obvious, but it bears repeating.  The implication is interesting, of course, because people will try to change the quality of software without changing the processes used to create it.

    — Nick

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