Rules of Thumb: Supporting Systems

Rule of Thumb 22: If your job is to make the users happy, then the users? job is to be unhappy. They will therefore never be happy, and because you aren?t focussing on the computers, the computers will never run right.

Corollary 1: The computers don?t know what their job is, so if your job is to make the computers run right, not only can you sometimes achieve that, you can sometimes make the users happy as a side effect.

Rule of Thumb 23: The cost of customization is complexity. The cost of complexity is increased difficulty in administration and user support. The cost of increased difficulty in administration and user support is either lower quality of administration and user support, increased support staff, or both. Therefore increased customization means increased cost, or lower quality of support, or both.

Corollary 1: It doesn?t matter whether customization has actually been done. The mere fact that it?s possible means you must check for it, thereby increasing the cost of problem diagnosis.

Rule of Thumb 24: The operating system is not your enemy. Even if it is evil. The applications are. Even when they aren?t evil.

Corollary 1: Once an application is too tightly integrated with the operating system, everything?s against you.

Rule of Thumb 25: The principal problem in any database (including directory services) is the data.