Business Software: Better by Design
Thursday, September 09, 2010
"A fine new book examines why B2B software doesn't work the
way you want It to", says Martin Veitch
It's always nice to get a surprise at Christmas, even if it does
come through the unglamorous process of digging through the
CIO slush piles for volumes worthy of the editorial eye.
This time, we pulled out a plum in this terrific book by the
founder of a US-based design agency examining the vexed question of
why business software tends to disappoint.
It's a question that most of us have given up trying to answer.
Because the wrong supplier got chosen? Because IT has no idea about
business? Because business has no idea about IT? Because the
wording of the RFP was bad? Because things changed partway through
the selection or development process? Who knows, so we shrug and
creep from project hell to the new world… of what also turns out to
be project hell.
All of these attempted answers have some validity but it's rare
for a writer to come up with such a cogent, trenchant polemic as
Hambrose manages here. As you might expect, Hambrose focuses on
software design, suggesting that software given to users all too
often fails to reflect the way they work or want to work. So it
falls into disuse, is detested or management comes up with some
spurious justification for the enormous amount of money invested in
it.
The sums are huge, of course, and I'm sure I'm not alone in
surveying the chaos and vast sums and half expecting to see the Mad
Hatter arrive for a tea party. Hambrose comes to our collective
rescue with an attempt to explain the problem and suggestions for
fixing it. His call is for better understanding of human behavior
and roles and for meshing business process experts, designers and
technologists. It's an argument that might sound familiar - clichéd
even - but the devil is in the detail and Hambrose articulates that
detail well.
What is attractive here is that Hambrose doesn't put himself in
a particular camp. He is as fiercely critical of design snobs as of
anybody else, recalling artistic types at agencies who cared more
about injecting their personalities into designs than making them
usable.
As well as being a fine read, this is a painstakingly, rather
wonderfully, illustrated book.
In order to accommodate Hambrose, we had to forsake our round-up
of CIO's best books of the year. But there's enough space
here to point out the best ones:
How The Mighty Fall by Jim Collins is a useful study of
why good companies go bad.
The Perfect Fit by Ed Grimshaw is a timely critique of
the hiring process.
India's Global Powerhouses (various authors) is an
eye-opening analysis of how fast the global economy is swinging
back to the BRIC countries and India in particular - and not just
in the technology sector.
The Adventures Of An IT Leader is a novel (in both
senses of the word) fictionalised story of a first-time CIO,
drafted in from outside of technology.
What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis takes the search
giant's philosophy and applies it to everything else.
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell sees the little master of
business/sociology/psychology/statistics take on the reasons for
individual success unconvincingly but entertainingly. And
entertainment is what's important at this time of year, isn't
it?
Source: CIO UK December 2009
(www.cio.co.uk)