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jackAny project -- civil engineering, software engineering, social, etc -- can suffer from a tipping point where one part of it is complete where people stop being grateful it's as good as it is, and start resenting it for not being finished.
If you write a software app, when it's just started, it's obviously fairly ad hoc. At worst, people say "I can't figure it out". But after you fix all the obvious shortfalls, it gets to where people can use it fairly trouble free for a couple of hours, and then suddenly hit a brick wall where they can't do X, or it doesn't work with software Y, or they do Z and it suddenly crashes. And they ask "why doesn't it work"? And the answer is "I haven't had time to examine the hundreds of possible situations people might use it in and make it not just functional but work seamlessly out-of-the-box in all of them yet". But that's little comfort. A better question might be, why does it LOOK as if it should always work?
Similarly, imagine playing bridge with someone. If they're a complete beginner, you're lucky if you can bid legally, let alone coherently, and you just take it as it goes. But once they've mastered all the basics and got reasonably consistent, it's possible that the exceptions surprise you more, because you've subconsciously started treating them as an expert, even though you know that even if they know a lot of things in theory, they've yet to practice every possible combination of them.
If you write a software app, when it's just started, it's obviously fairly ad hoc. At worst, people say "I can't figure it out". But after you fix all the obvious shortfalls, it gets to where people can use it fairly trouble free for a couple of hours, and then suddenly hit a brick wall where they can't do X, or it doesn't work with software Y, or they do Z and it suddenly crashes. And they ask "why doesn't it work"? And the answer is "I haven't had time to examine the hundreds of possible situations people might use it in and make it not just functional but work seamlessly out-of-the-box in all of them yet". But that's little comfort. A better question might be, why does it LOOK as if it should always work?
Similarly, imagine playing bridge with someone. If they're a complete beginner, you're lucky if you can bid legally, let alone coherently, and you just take it as it goes. But once they've mastered all the basics and got reasonably consistent, it's possible that the exceptions surprise you more, because you've subconsciously started treating them as an expert, even though you know that even if they know a lot of things in theory, they've yet to practice every possible combination of them.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-02-09 04:16 pm (UTC)The feature creep strikes again
Date: 2014-02-09 10:54 pm (UTC)Good layout, a couple of well-chosen graphics, and filling out the expected menus and dialogues is all of a morning's work. Negligible, even.
...Which led to a natural expectation that they ought to fulfil all manner of extended expectations; the skill is managing that away from dissatisfaction into requests to extend my contract and implement the new requirements.