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by Michael Cote.
Original Post: The Risk of Doing Nothing
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Feed Description: Using Java to get to the ideal state.
Much of project management is managing risks. In the worst case, that's all it is. So, when someone suggests doing something new, the project management part of your brain starts coming up with all the risks of the new things. Indeed, most of this type of thinking reduces to a strong belief in The One True Risk Theory: the primary risk is making any changes at all, no matter what those changes are. Changing course is risky.
When it comes to software I tend to think the opposite: staying the same is the primary risk. The status quo is doomed in most of the cases. In so many cases in the past decade, the real risk was doing nothing at all. And that's certainly true now. As just one example: the telcos are taking a huge risk by not grabbing onto VoIP right now, full-throttle.
So, the next time you find yourself saying something is too risky, ask yourself: how risky is it to keep doing what I'm doing? What's the risk of my current plan.
Indeed, this is a specific implementation of one of my favorite software laws, DeMarco's First Law of Bad Management: if something isn't working, keep doing it.
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