MANAGEMENT MANTRA -The Road Ahead
Our Alma Mater [MCEME] is fifty years young. Nuts and Bolts are gradually giving way to chips and diskettes. Are we really going soft? I mean the software way? It can’t be true. After all, you still need the good old nuts and bolts(the real hardware to keep them all together, even in the world of the cyberspace and CIM (Computer Integrated Management)
Computer programming ushered in the age of the knowledge Worker and the importance of ‘brainware’. Are they always ‘infallible’ and do they always remain on cloud 9? Let us have a quick look at some of the laws of computer programming (courtesy – Applied Murphology – extended from Murphy’s Laws).
* Any given programme, when running, is obsolete.
* Any given programme costs more and takes longer.
* If a programme is useful, it will have to be changed.
* If a programme is useless, it will have to be documented.
* Any given programme will expand to fill all available memory.
* The value of a programme is proportional to the weight of its output.
Programme complexity grows until it exceeds the capability of the programmer, who must maintain it.
Tail Piece
“ Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it. [Shaw’s Principle] –
From the desk of Dean FIET , Brig K Harikumar
July 1996