TomBascom
Curmudgeon
What is Getting Real?
...
Getting Real is a smaller, faster, better way to build software.
Getting Real is about skipping all the stuff that
represents real (charts, graphs, boxes, arrows, schematics,
wireframes, etc.) and actually building the real thing.
Getting real is less. Less mass, less software, less features,
less paperwork, less of everything that’s not essential (and
most of what you think is essential actually isn’t).
Getting Real is staying small and being agile...
and perhaps more to my point:
IOW Oracle having a gazillion features that Progress doesn't does not automatically make it the better tool for a given job.Build Less
Underdo your competition
Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors you
need to one-up them. If they have four features, you need five
(or 15, or 25). If they’re spending x, you need to spend xx. If
they have 20, you need 30.
This sort of one-upping Cold War mentality is a dead-end. It’s
an expensive, defensive, and paranoid way of building products.
Defensive, paranoid companies can’t think ahead, they can only
think behind. They don’t lead, they follow.
If you want to build a company that follows, you might as well put down
this book now.
So what to do then? The answer is less. Do less than your competitors
to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the
hairy, difficult, nasty problems to everyone else. Instead of oneupping,
try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.
We’ll cover the concept of less throughout this book, but for
starters, less means:
- Less features
- Less options/preferences
- Less people and corporate structure
- Less meetings and abstractions
- Less promises
Sure, there are times when you really do need some of those Oracle features. If you really need them that badly go ahead and use Oracle. I won't feel bad, I promise.
Plenty of us find the Progress feature set to be appropriate for what we're doing. If you're offended by that then I'm sorry but I really can't help you with that.