The End Of Software - Anibal's Blog

Sometimes It's difficult to introduce the need of a checklist. At the end, it's a simple list of steps.

The greatest sin is the question: How can I forget X?

So, the real mistake is when we fail to recognize that we use to forget a step in any procedure.

I've read this very inspirational article The Checklist, by Atul Gawande about the need of checklists in medicine. Some excerpts:

Still, the Army purchased a few aircraft from Boeing as test planes, and some insiders remained convinced that the aircraft was flyable. So a group of test pilots got together and considered what to do.

They could have required Model 299 pilots to undergo more training. But it was hard to imagine having more experience and expertise than Major Hill, who had been the U.S. Army Air Corps’ chief of flight testing. Instead, they came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist ...

Medicine today has entered its B-17 phase. Substantial parts of what hospitals do—most notably, intensive care—are now too complex for clinicians to carry them out reliably from memory alone. I.C.U. life support has become too much medicine for one person to fly.

On a sheet of plain paper, he plotted out the steps to take in order to avoid infections when putting a line in. Doctors are supposed to
(1) wash their hands with soap,
(2) clean the patient’s skin with chlorhexidine antiseptic,
(3) put sterile drapes over the entire patient,
(4) wear a sterile mask, hat, gown, and gloves, and
(5) put a sterile dressing over the catheter site once the line is in.Check, check, check, check, check.

In December, 2006, the Keystone Initiative published its findings ... The typical I.C.U.—including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital—cut its quarterly infection rate to zero.

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As a follow-up of my previous post, about how we are adopting consumer-level products in an entrepreneur environment; we have a mirror trend to adopt the same personal device along the corporate IT policy.

At the end, it's same device. If we think about it from an efficiency point of view, we just need the same access policy, and we have all users/employees connected under one policy.

There are several benefits. Users are not going to try "another ways" to circumvent IT policy. They are accepted under a formal guideline.

By setting official policies on the use of mobile phones in the workplace, you can gain control over the devices with encryption, PIN requirements, and the option to remotely wipe data in case of a lost phone. Try to ban them, and you risk circumvention and security risks.

Intel adopted this trend, and ended up with 15,000 mobile devices hooked up to its e-mail system; nearly two-thirds of them were owned by employees. This was a big win for end users, for the budget, and for efficiency.

Source: ArsTechnica -The single best change your IT department could make—what is it?

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There's a strong software and hardware trend to use the same consumer-level products in the enterprise environment. An entry level device can be easily applied in an office or a mid-range product can be bought to use at home (same price point and quality).

Today, reading the article "When Will Your Job Be Consumerized?" I’ve come to realize that my work is already consumerized.

Some years ago, I began naturally to integrate open source software and software-as-a-service. This first steps were oriented to empower the development, and the whole process were still in-house.

Open source has been maturing. In every IT area, you can find software vendors who work only to provide support services based on their own open sourced software; or partners who provide services based on a shared open sourced base package.

Nowadays, IT work is like a "shopping activity", choosing from 30-40 open sourced packages; and, as architect, choosing from the shelf the right features. Development is all about how to seamless integrate the different packages into one only view and design style. In the long term, vendors and the community use to provide frequent improved new versions, so the task in not only about configuration and integration; maintenance is the key for long term support.

To give you a practical example, we are building Professional Networks for specific vertical segments. So we use to match a CMS (Joomla) with a Template, a Directory, a Photo Gallery, a Forum, etc. All package areas are provided by several vendors with a long-term strategy.

At the end, I see an evolution in how software is developed. Each provider has the challenge to sell the best product. It has to be open source to be easily integrated. Software ecosystem is more flexible, and IT consumer has more choices to pick from.

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