Fatal problems that hit start ups seem left-field, but they are baked into the design choices we make, often without discussion - because they seem part of "current accepted wisdom".
My major issue for startup software development is that often software is developed too discretely - with a utopian 'final version' in mind. Developers don't think holistically enough - they focus on details at the expense of design. "current accepted wisdom" is intangible, ever shifting, whereas the failure of a system is very real and can lead to loss of income etc...
Lots of start up companies don't design systems with humans in them, they write code as if it was a standalone thing - they often leave out the human bits because they are hard to evaluate, measure and control - variety of skill, ideas, approaches, mistakes, quality of life etc.
In my experience, this variety (life) often comes back to bite companies that can't handle eventual variance because of poor system design - not because of a choice of platform / provider / software etc.
I have been reading a lot around the viable system model (VSM) for organising projects. It seems to fit with what my view on this is. I am trying to implement a project using this model currently.
My major issue for startup software development is that often software is developed too discretely - with a utopian 'final version' in mind. Developers don't think holistically enough - they focus on details at the expense of design. "current accepted wisdom" is intangible, ever shifting, whereas the failure of a system is very real and can lead to loss of income etc...
Lots of start up companies don't design systems with humans in them, they write code as if it was a standalone thing - they often leave out the human bits because they are hard to evaluate, measure and control - variety of skill, ideas, approaches, mistakes, quality of life etc.
In my experience, this variety (life) often comes back to bite companies that can't handle eventual variance because of poor system design - not because of a choice of platform / provider / software etc.
I have been reading a lot around the viable system model (VSM) for organising projects. It seems to fit with what my view on this is. I am trying to implement a project using this model currently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viable_system_model