Iterative Process

Here’s my latest comic: https://inhumaneresourcescomic.com/#/panel/501.

A note: I forgot to post on Sunday again. I’m just a few hours late this time. Nothing huge is going on, but it’s tough for me to remember stuff when my routine has upended, and the pandemic has definitely done that.

So there’s a thing maybe only tech people would know about: the iterative process. Traditionally, software companies worked in a given way. If you were building a house, it would be like this:

1. You spend months building the house.
2. You bring in the building inspector and architect to check that you did it right.
3. You fix what they say was wrong over a couple more months.
4. You try to sell your new house.

But now they work like this:

1. You build a kitchen.
2. You bring in everybody to make sure the kitchen works okay.
3. You fix anything that’s wrong with the kitchen.
4. You build the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen.

So it has some advantages. You know if you’re really screwing the pooch before the entire house is done. Maybe you need a kitchen before you have the badroom (you’re catering or something).

The “iterative process” makes a good punchline because software companies frequently use it to mask their basic dysfunction. I worked at one place where we hired contractors to educate us on the iterative process. They didn’t get requirements (the first step in software development) over to us for nearly a year, defending the lack as “an iterative process”. At my next job after that, the same thing happened, only with managers.

So I gambled that, to software developers, they’d hear “iterative process” applied to eyes being torn out and see a second parallel.

Also, a couple of these drawings turned out both satisfying for me and pretty fast, so it was a good entry.