Beta As A Business Model

Surely it’s better to please customers than continually extort them?

“Image generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E.”

There’s a really stark difference between looking at something on, say, an App Store¹, and taking even a terrifying glimpse into the world of “business to business” software engineering that us worker cogs tend to be involved in.

For one, on an App Store you tend to have¹ what used to be known as “quality” in our industry. Apps that don’t quit unexpectedly, do what they say on the tin, and are, wait for it, actually finished.

Whilst, in our own specific circle of day to day hell, it’s as rare as seeing a dodo peeking through the office’s kitchen window², or calling an extinction update meeting on Teams, to even glimpse a finished product.

And why’s that, fellow engineer? Well, I’ll tell you why, it’s because we rarely finish anything. We can, of course, but we are rarely, if ever, allowed to actually do so. By management.

With the everlasting agile circus already vanquishing actual requirements gathering, design, and documentation we were already in a bad place in terms of getting things done and out of the door.

But with the continuing clown show that is software project management, whose sole purpose is to extend the number of billable hours that can be pinned on a customer so’s to bleed them almost, but…