I was just reading an article that features Steve Ballmer explaining why the Microsoft Windows operating system is so far behind. The amazing thing to me is that the folks up there in Redmond are brilliant, they're smart and they've been doing software for a long time.

So how does stuff like this happen? In the article Ballmer basically concedes that they attempted an aggressive big bang release. In a strategy like that a company gets the super-smart people in a room, they guess about the architecture of the end state of the product. They then artificially cut up the architecture into components. Then they guess about the needs and interactions between all of the little components. Then they figure out when those needs will need to be completed. Now the magic really begins you whip out Microsoft Project and plot every hour of every developers time for the next 6 or more months. You also plot completion times and dependencies between tasks.

Now you've done it, you have something to be proud of. People will speak of your creation, it will honor you like the great pyramids of Egypt honor the pharaohs. Except there's 1 problem, you're wrong. Don't get too upset, you didn't have a chance.

You see this over and over with big software projects. I've been in the business for a decade and I've seen it too many times. The thing I don't get is that these are really smart people.

Perhaps the problem is that we don't have monuments to our failures. We don't have a Tacoma Narrows or a Leaning Tower of Pisa to look at to remind us that we need to be more careful again. Our field is so abstract that re-defining success on a $10 million boondoggle is quite easily done.

My main point is that we gotta get rid of hubris. Computers can do so much more for business and the world if we just take a more modest and realistic view of what we're capable of.

Besides audacity and too much self-confidence, businesses sometimes structure their IT funding such that it will fail. The only projects that get funding in some businesses are the flights to Mars. The executive board doesn't get excited about sending out probes, they too want to leave their mark on the world with brave new initiatives.

Smart isn't enough, in fact sometimes it's a detriment. We need to be pragmatic and aware of our limits and honest about what is possible.