Ignoring Culture

IF you did not watch the Netflix show: Downfall the case against boing. Please drop everything, go watch it, then come back to my blog post. You really need to watch it. I've been following the 737-MAX drama closely since 2019. Now if you watch the Netflix show and read this link. You will see why I'm doing this blog post. Because I believe there are valuable lessons we can learn from software engineering. Let's first review the technology industry's state of affairs: Waterfall projects are everywhere, thanks to SAFE. Technical debt is never so high, and the tendency is to get even worse over time. LLMs are great but also a great way to add more technical debt faster into the systems. Now, if you think this is a rant, you are wrong. IF you think I'm overstating that SAFE is evil, go read this about what the Agile co-creators said about SAFE.

How we do things matters!

Let's look at movements from a different perspective. What do Agile, Lean, DevOps, SOA, CI/CD, LeanStartup, LeanUX, Continuous Discovery, Dual Track Agile, XP, Kanban, and Team Topologies have in common? In the phrase "how we do things matters," software often seems to be a cost center and a commodity. That is how you shoot yourself in the foot. 

When software is a cost and commodity, what can we do?

  • Get the cheapest and worst engineers we can find. Why not pay more for a commodity? 
  • Only focus on process(SAFE) and tight management. 
  • Don't refactor, don't touch the code, and have small teams manage many legacy systems at once.
  • Ignore errors, logs, and alerts. Only focus on critical incidents. 
  • More control, less flexibility, less ownership, less creativity.
That might sound right, but Lean and Team topologies teach us that they create an anti-flow system where things will be slower and the user experience will suffer. You might think it is okay. After all, companies keep growing, so it cannot be wrong, right? 

Let's go back to Boing and 373-MAX and this link: SPEEA engineer breaks silence on Boeing's MAX 737. Read this letter - key learnings are:

  • “The cost-cutting culture is the opposite of a culture built on productivity, innovation, safety or quality”
  • "Production problems with the 787, 747-8, and now the 737 Max have cost billions of dollars, put airline customers at risk, and tarnished decades of accumulated goodwill and brand loyalty.
  • “If the message is 'follow the plan' and you watch co-workers who raised an objection and the problem isn't taken seriously or they're considered troublesome, then that's a cultural message you pick up”
Please watch the Netflix show. Another way to see what's going on here is that when we ignore problems, eventually, there will be time to pay. Maybe it takes many decades, but there is no escape. Ignoring technical debt slowly creates a snowball effect, where the problems compound and, sooner or later, become much worse.

SAFE is Not Safe

When there are many problems, the process is often seen as the silver bullet to fix all problems. SAFE is not safe. Let's go back to the other link and quote some of the agile co-creators comments:

  • “SAFe is not Agile, it’s just Waterfall in disguise.” -- Robert C Martin
  • “SAFe is a bureaucracy that has simply incorporated Agile jargon.” -- Brian Marick
  • “SAFe’s emphasis on structure and control goes against the Agile principles of flexibility and adaptability.” -- Dave Thomas
  • “SAFe is the antithesis of Agile; it’s a bloated, top-down framework that stifles innovation and creativity.” -- Ken Schwaber 
  • “SAFe is a step backward from the Agile Manifesto; it’s a return to command-and-control management and waterfall-style planning.” -- Jon Kern
SAFE is tricky because it quotes Agile and leans all the time; in the reference, it even has the Agile manifesto. I remeber that more than 20 years ago, RUP was considered heavy and big, so how safe is the comparison? 10x bigger? 10x worst? 

Ignoring culture will never work

Ignoring errors, alerts, technical debt, bad management, and bad decisions will not fix our problems. Our industry is doing way much ignoring. It's time for us as an industry to stop ignoring the problems and do the hard things. IF we don't learn, we will keep making the same mistakes forever.

Ignoring is "easy". Let's stop that, learn, and do hard work.

Here are some other entertaining links:

Work on the production line of Boeing 737 Max ‘not adequately funded’

Software Vulnerabilities on Boing 787

Airbus A350 software bug forces airlines to turn planes off and on every 149 hours

It's easy to think, OH, this is just in the space industry. It does not affect my industry; it does, and this is everywhere. Ignoring culture is really killing our world. It needs to stop. 80/90s was all about quality. Clearly, the world needs that back; we need to be more lean and care more about how we do things.

Cheers,

Diego Pacheco

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