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In my last article we talked about the importance of knowing what the design specifications you are building and how end use is more important then what people ask for in what they think is their ideal product. In this article we are going to talk about strengths and weaknesses in the creation process.
In any design process there are real people with experiences, skill, knowledge and bias. The trick is to emphasize the strengths and exploit the knowledge's while minimizing the bias.
So lets start with a fictious company, ACME Hammers Inc., to build our hammers.
Lets face it hammers is in its name, it's what they know and what they are known for. That means that the nailgun from the last post, while it might be a better tool for what we need, is not going to be built. This is not a bad thing either, they have tons of knowledge and equipment that has been specialized and gives them a competitive edge.
They have a set amount of equipment that they own and that they have workers trained on. Needless to say whatever they are going to build will be made suing those machines rather than going out and buying new ones and training people.
So the capabilities of the team and the company determines a lot about the product.
If you're a company with a history of making databases and you have a lot of guys who like to code in C then everything you make is going to be created through that filter. The lead developer might think that Ruby on Rails is the worse language he has ever seen and ban people from using it. One developer might love UML and insist on using it every time he can. The manager might have come from a conference on "Extreme Programing" and think that its the bee's knees and revamp the entire way things are coded. Everyone has there opinion on why their way is the best way and they tend to see everything from that subjective viewpoint.
The problem is when there is an easier way to make a better tool by leaving your comfort zone. Most people who design forget the old adage that if you have a big enough hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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