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Comment by akeefer | Hacker News Reader

Pretty much all "enterprise software" is fundamentally the art of taking totally irrational, human-defined, fuzzy, incompletely-specified pre-existing processes that have been built up over decades or centuries, and turning them into an automated system that functions more or less identically. It's fundamentally different than doing something like writing a word processor or e-mail client which, while it has its own complications, doesn't suffer from having to exactly model some pre-existing, half-specified, inconsistent process that was developed by humans long before the advent of software.

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I often wish there was some way to inject some order back into the real world systems. So many of the techniques and processes that developers take for granted seem entirely absent from our regulatory and administrative law systems:

refactoring

version control

DRY applied to laws and contracts

diff tools for laws and contracts

standard interfaces

This is where entrepreneurship comes into play (at least in the long run). Many older enterprises become uncompetitive because of the chaotic absurdity of their systems. This allows upstart new entrants or innovative competitors to eat their lunch.

There are many ways to bring some order back into the world, as you say, but it can be a struggle. In my experience, business leaders will support simpler systems and processes if (and only if!) the benefits clearly outweigh the costs.

As an IT professional, framing the right perspective is essential to getting acceptance for better systems. Presenting a more powerful, but simpler, system as "losing some rarely used and inefficient features" is a sure way to get that project rejected. Management will only hear the "losing" part as a loss in total value and therefore worse than the current solution.

Personally, I like to present formalized system upgrades as the price of growth and future growth potential. Most business leaders can wrap their heads around the concept of "we need to focus and streamline in order to reach the next level", regardless of technical experience.

I guess I wasn't clear. I realize that businesses need to survive in the eco-system created by crazy laws and ill-thought out regulations and contracts.

I was trying to suggest that the legal and regulatory framework is what needs to be fixed, not the businesses.

Ah, look at that, I totally misread where you were going! ;-) In my experience, regulations and crazy laws aren't really a competitive advantage or disadvantage because all of the market players are playing by similar rules. I'm not saying that there's no negative effect to bad regs and laws, but the costs are shared fairly equally.

I've never worked at a business that was cut off at the knees by new laws or regs. I'm sure it's happened, but I'm not convinced it's common. What I have witnessed though, many times at many employers, is pure self-inflicted complexity. The did-they-even-consider-the-cost kind of complexity that is nightmarish to implement and hampers future changes.

As an IT pro I can't do much about the laws and regulations, but I can advise and design business systems in ways to avoid complexity traps and help accommodate more sane business processes.

>As an IT pro I can't do much about the laws and regulations, but I can advise and design business systems in ways to avoid complexity traps and help accommodate more sane business processes.

This, I think, is a very healthy attitude; Focus on what you can change rather than railing against things that won't.

... and this is probably why some tools or some methodologies work in Enterprise but might not work in commercial software.

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