Do you want to really see the worst of software that exists on the surface of planet earth? A few funny examples aside, chances are, that you are not going to find it online. If you are looking for some genuine gems of stupidity, lack of vision, bad design or just down right stupid implementations, go look at the applications that power the intranet of some of the so called big enterprises or the fortune five thousand.
Khoi Vinh takes the famous analogy of duck typing: "If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck" and turns it into a rather interesting satire on enterprise software. He calls it: "If It Looks Like a Cow, Swims Like a Dolphin and Quacks Like a Duck, It Must Be Enterprise Software"
Khoi also provides his logic on why he believes enterprise software stinks even after the countless dollars that are poured into the efforts of building these applications. He explains:
This is partly because enterprise software rarely gets critiqued the way even a US$30 piece of shareware will. It doesn’t benefit from the rigor of a wide and varied base of users, many of whom will freely offer merciless feedback, goading and demanding it to be better with each new release.
Shielded away from the bright scrutiny of the consumer marketplace and beholden only to a relatively small coterie of information technology managers who are concerned primarily with stability, security and the continual justification of their jobs and staffs, enterprise software answers to few actual users.
Given that hothouse environment, it’s only natural that the result is often very strange.
Of course, most people who take the buying decisions in the enterprise world are going to have blind spots but If you are a programmer with basic ethics and self respect who happens to build software for the enterprise, the first question you need to ask yourself is this:
How do you take the same software, shred off the elements of complexity out of it, stop bitching about performance and add a touch of genuine magic, simplicity, genuinely kickass speed and interactivity to your applications.
Google Apps does it with its paid offering. They take the simple, easy to use, light weight applications designed for end users, tested by millions of live real life users and offer it to the enterprise with added features, more space and a premium price.
If you look into the approach it is rather simple and straight forward. You build for the end consumer. Then once you have enough people using it for free, you let enterprises adapt it and pay for it. You stop bitching about performance and you actually build fast applications. You focus on simplicity, ease of use, easy adaption and you build with the purest of intent.
As rework the famous book by the guys at 37Signals describes, the suits at enterprises that make the buying decisions and sign off paychecks don't wake up in morning wishing they had more slower, sloppier or complicated applications.
So if you are a developer or a technical manager, stop using the fact that you build an enterprise application as an excuse for slapping together random text boxes, drop down lists and option buttons, frameworks, building weird things and calling them enterprise applications. Continue to master the art of simplification. Even your enterprise users will love you for it. After all, working on Enterprise software is not an excuse for building software that sucks. Seriously.
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