It is worth considering that in other environments than this one, speaking directly to the point with calibrated confidence is not the persuasive tactic. Just get something in front of users is a not a complete statement of the optimal strategy, it is a rhetorical overreaction to insisting on millions of dollars and years worth of waterfall-model development before actually checking to see if anyone cares. When these ideas were first proposed, IBM had overwhelming market share in computing.
The big corporate model of product development was and is very good at producing a finished product, the problem is it doesn’t address whether anyone will buy it. This is solving the wrong problem—Big Design Up Front was mostly about how to use the corporation’s technical resources efficiently. Further, it is all-or-nothing; people either buy the finished product or they do not. This still looks like the basic case of good model or bad model, not one of no model at all.
There are two further things to consider: one, that IBM is generations of dominance ago clearly indicates the norm has moved a great deal from that time; two, IBM is still alive and still routinely criticized for the heavy, bureaucratic way it goes about business.
It is worth considering that in other environments than this one, speaking directly to the point with calibrated confidence is not the persuasive tactic. Just get something in front of users is a not a complete statement of the optimal strategy, it is a rhetorical overreaction to insisting on millions of dollars and years worth of waterfall-model development before actually checking to see if anyone cares. When these ideas were first proposed, IBM had overwhelming market share in computing.
The big corporate model of product development was and is very good at producing a finished product, the problem is it doesn’t address whether anyone will buy it. This is solving the wrong problem—Big Design Up Front was mostly about how to use the corporation’s technical resources efficiently. Further, it is all-or-nothing; people either buy the finished product or they do not. This still looks like the basic case of good model or bad model, not one of no model at all.
There are two further things to consider: one, that IBM is generations of dominance ago clearly indicates the norm has moved a great deal from that time; two, IBM is still alive and still routinely criticized for the heavy, bureaucratic way it goes about business.