Amateurs and Professionals

How hard can it be to gather 1777 data records? As events in Iowa show, surprisingly difficult.

As an IT professional, I would like to point out that it wasn't our fault. No professionals were involved in this debacle.

Many amateurs were, though.

The people behind the app apparently thought it would be safer to keep the app secret and release it at the last possible moment. That meant no pesky security researchers pointing out flaws in the app. It also meant that users were given an unknown app just before they needed to use it for an important function. Since nobody had bothered doing usability tests with actual users, human errors were widespread. Additionally, lack of testing meant that a data conversion error went undetected until the application went live.

Professionals would have recognized that this app was both externally-facing and important, thus belonging at the top right of the Effort Matrix.

For applications that are internal and unimportant, it makes sense to make only a minimum effort, but externally-facing applications need more care, and important ones even more so.

A professional would never have released an untested app for an important business function. I hope all of your developers are professionals.

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