Random Acts of Madness

One of the most interesting aspects of software development is how reasonable sounding ideas can go so horribly wrong in practice.

One of my favorite examples is the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern. At its heart, it is a simple idea: separate the data model from its presentation aspects. Redundancy in coding often comes from taking the same underlying data and dressing it up in many different ways. The brute force approach introduces a never-ending series of inconsistencies when the model code and the presentation code are done differently, again and again, for each slightly different viewpoint at the higher level. By separating them, the programmers need only to build the model once and then leverage that work for each slightly different presentation, achieving built-in consistency in the process.

But in practice, the MVC pattern morphed into the sub-structure of an incomplete framework. Although it only solves a tiny fraction of the necessary architecture of the system, people begin using it as if covers the entire architecture. These days its main use is to bind a static system navigation to a large series of static screens through a rather convoluted declarative approach in static configuration files written in a different (and highly restricted) computer language. That’s a long long way from its origins.

To make this clearer, I’ll give an example using the dreaded construction analogy. It helps to give this a more concrete perspective. We’ll consider a simple prototypical project to build a multi-floor apartment building for tenants ...

The project starts as the desire for an organization to build a new apartment building. The land is purchased and cleared, the builders hired and a number of possible tenants have signed on board to varying degrees.

The first choice made is to get some global design for the building. So the lead builders decide to use the Acme Elevator Shaft framework. It’s easy to set up, and is highly versatile in allowing the elevator to stop at any height for the floors. You just cut in a new door in the shaft, and set some markers. It also allows for builders to literally hang their floors off the shaft. Everyone agrees that this feature would be very helpful.

As usual, feedback from possible tenants has been encouraging, but highly contradictory as each of them has their own unique wish-list and dreams. Some people want a grand establishment, while others are more focused on the nit picky details. Management sets up a list of priorities, and insists that some tenants will get to move in before the entire building is completed. They hire some outside consultants who insist that not only is this possible, but the building can be constructed in a piecewise manner, which they say will insure a better design.

There are 5 builders and amongst themselves they decide that each builder should work on a specific floor. Many feel that the upper floors are the most interesting, so they they partition out the work randomly. Each builder will take a couple of floors (but not in sequence) and start working on them right away. One builder insists on wanting to do the basement first, but management has already decided that the 5th floor needs to be done right away because the tenant on that floor is louder and richer than the others.

The work starts well. A big hole is dug, a small pad of concrete laid, and the Acme Elevator Shaft is installed so that the other builders can immediately get to work on their parts without having to wait for the basement to be completed.

Because no one has decided how many floors will exist, the elevator shaft is set to allow for a possible 31 floors. Management has specified that the building should have somewhere between 15 to 20 floors. Initially they wanted to fix the number, but the main builder and the consultants successfully argued for some flexibility here. They feel that the creativity of the building team should not be restricted by selecting an arbitrary number of floors and that the project should be allowed some room to grow. Management was also trying to fix the number of apartments, they need at least 45 of them to make a profit, but again they were beaten back in the name of reason.

The lead builder doing the 5th floor decides that the proportions of his floor should be 441.2x867 ft, and contain the standard 5 units with the elevator located in the middle. He’s worked on several buildings in the past, and that was always the sized they used. Just to spice it up, though he decides to have 9 ft ceilings. It’s a nice touch, he is proud of his design. He cuts a hole in the elevator shaft

The junior-most builder is assigned the 8th floor. In school they taught 200x300 ft, with only 3 units so he sets out in that direction. His Prof. stated that nobody would ever need more than 6.5 feet. He also makes the assumption that he doesn’t need to add a ceiling, since that will come from the floor above him. He is proud of his cost savings measures.

The basement builder gets to work early and lays an intricate series of parking garage floors, and basement storage. He considers carefully how building maintenance will need space in the winter to store a snow-blower and in the summer to store a tractor for cutting the lawn. There is even a nice little industrial strength, mini-elevator shaft to move things around his floors. He starts on the left side, being very diligent as he goes.

Several other floors start in progression at the same time, a female builder goes after the third floor, and another older developer starts work up on 13. Work progresses.

Management is ecstatic, since there are clear signs of progress and the building team has divvied up the work successfully. The tenants hold a celebratory party, complaining about the sins of their last apartments and heaping praise on the builders for their intelligence and skill level. Morale is high.

The work continues, but one astute tenant notices that there is no work being done on the first floor even though they are scheduled to move in soon; in just 3 months. Management quickly hires two new builders. One is assigned to the 6 floor and the other starts work on floors 10, 18, and 21. The second new builder comes up with the bright idea that the elevator should should be offset to the left (from an entrance perspective), and all 6 units would be in a half-circle around it. He read it in a magazine somewhere and always wanted to try that design.

Meanwhile the junior builder has become concerned about that fact that the 8th floor has no ceiling. He tries bring it up, but the older builders just tell him that it works this way. It will all come together in the end, they say.

As the move-in date is fast approaching, the lead builder quickly fashions a 1st floor lobby, and cuts enough of a hole that people can start accessing the elevator to get to his almost completed 5th floor. Management is elated, since even more progress is made. Everyone volunteers for overtime, and more floors are started.

It isn’t long after this milestone that things take a turn for the worst. Since no-one considered plumbing and electricity, several different builders have gone off on their own and tried stick in some quick infrastructure. One builder chooses to run her pipes and wires up the left side, while another one is trying to connect things from a top-down approach on the right. There are a few tenants moved in already, most were desperate for a place to live, or their investment caused problems with their cash-flow.

Besides the noise of construction, and the fact that electricity and water are intermittent, tenants on the 7th floor have noticed that there is an ever present nasty smell. The builders deny it, but then someone notices that the trash chutes (all 8 of them) for the upper floors seem to be terminating on the 8th floor.

A quick meeting is held, and all of the builders decide that the problem isn’t immediate since there is enough space on the 8th floor to accommodate the growing mounds of trash, nobody is living there right now, it would be too much work to remove the garbage and connect all of the trash chutes together. It is ignored for the time being. Management hails this choice as a cost-savings measure.

More trouble erupts as some of the newer tenants want to repaint the garish colors chosen at random by various builders, only to discover that the paint used was specially designed to not allow primers, paint or even wallpaper to stick over it. The builders argue that they have excellent visual sense and that everybody should love their choices of industrial strength day-glow reds, greens and pinks. They just don’t see the need to repaint, it is a wasted effort. Little progress is made on this issue.

This causes a mutiny, as some of the less tied tenants opt out of the project and head for greener pastures (literally, they ultimately choose camping in tents as their new residences). The remaining tenants, less than 20% of the expected occupancy, are either too desperate for a place to live or too financially bound to the project to be able to flee with dignity. Most live on the lower floors since there is a rumor that the upper ones are going to collapse soon, and still don’t have water or electricity. Several of the builders feel very proud that people are living in their works.

Time wears on and the everyone notices that the floors of one of the newer builders, the guy who wanted everything off-center, have started to shift the entire building to one side. This is causing a problem with the Ache Elevator Shaft, it is slowly bending to the right, which is making the elevators stick when going from floor to floor. Another quick meeting is held, and everyone decides that if they pile up enough scaffolding, they can offset the unbalanced weight. A few steel i-beams are added to help shore up the weight. A neighboring building complains because one of the new i-beans is stuck right through their lobby. Management dismisses their complains, noting that their building is hideous and should be rebuilt.

At this point, several builders, the consultants and a few managers leave the project, including the basement builder. His works are finished on the left side, but not on the right. The left has a nice set of storage and parking garages but unfortunately the ramps to get cars up and down were going to be on the right side. So instead of real cars, the basement is filled with intricate mock-ups of cars, that if ever the ramps did get completed, would prove the validity of the design.

The tenants are rightly pissed, but the remaining builders insist that it is actually their fault for allowing the scope to creep and for constantly changing the requirements. The tenants are to blame (and management too for not reining them in). After all, if they had wanted all the floors to be the exact same size and height, they should have just said so. A few little gaps between the walls and ceiling isn’t a big deal: it just helps to ensure good airflow, and it is far easier to know what the weather is outside if some of it is inside as well.

The consultants that fled spread the word about how successful the project was. They hold it up as an iconic example of how their techniques help to ensure the success of any project. They point to the one floor that two builders did together, even though the left and right halves were different dimension and the whole thing slopes by 22 degrees. They point to the tape measures that they handed out to every builder and made them spend lots of time using. They say that this constant measuring ensures the high quality of each floor, it was exactly the unique size that each developer wanted.

The first round of builders that fled also talk about the successes with great enthusiasm. Stating how 441.2x867 ft and 7.2 ft ceiling should be the accepted standard for all future floors in all future buildings. They admit to a few failings, but blame them squarely on the tenants, whom they say, didn’t really help in building anything. They also point out that management should have done a much better job at making sure that everybody followed the 441.2x867 ft standard, since it is so well-known in the industry.

The surviving management and builders slump into depression, choosing to do almost nothing as the growing list of problems overwhelms the tenants. They know if they wait long enough, if enough problems develop, that sooner or later the momentum will just build up again and they can start from scratch. Why fix it, if it should be torn down before it is even completed?

The builders blame management and the users. They feel that they did an exemplary job, given the circumstances, so it wasn’t their fault at all. Most of them would have left in the earlier wave, but somewhere along the way they lost their confidence and their desire to continue building things. It is just easier to sit and wait it out.

The tenants wonder what sort of horrible acts they committed in the past to get this much bad karma. All they wanted was a nice and cosy, well-built place to live and now everybody is saying it is their fault for doing “something”, but that “something” is always too vague to really make sense of. They feel cheated, so they walk around often talking about how much they hate buildings, apartment and most of all construction. They’re surprised and disappointed when the builders show them so little empathy, after all who else knows any better how much misery they’ve been put through.

Eventually management sucks up the courage to do it all over again. Although this particular project was a complete and utter failure -- yes it was built, but never even came close to making a profit due to the lack of tenants -- they somehow see the positive side and decide to learn from their mistakes. “This time …” they tell themselves, “this time we won’t use the Acme Elevator Shaft. That was the problem. This time we’ll do it right and use the Mega-co Elevator Shaft, that will fix everything.” Eventually the cycle starts all over again.

Sadly, if you replace the construction terms with technical ones, this little example is what a typical software development project normally looks like. Our epic failure rate, and the commonness of this type of project speak for themselves. Our industry's landscape is littered with countless fugly disasters that are barely standing and many more that are just piles of ruble. In spite of this, you constantly see the insistence on how Acme Elevator Shafts (a.k.a. the MVC pattern) makes great frameworks, and that we shouldn’t re-invent the wheel. While there is nothing wrong with an elevator shaft, but when it is used so badly it just magnifies the problems. In building an apartment, the elevator shaft, while crucial is just a small part of a much larger design. Trying to avoid that design work, while also failing to work consistently as a team -- not just a bunch of cranky individuals -- results in the systematic breakdown of the project. The freedoms that the shaft allows should never have been used at an individual level, they were meant for the project as a whole. In truth, any group of people working collectively that can’t all get on the same page at the same time is bound for failure. Software development just has the bad attribute that this dis-organization and disagreement can be hidden for a long time, making things look far better than they are in reality.