Around 20 years ago, when struggling to decide if I should shift from a career as a research physicist to a career in IT, I was impressed with the idea that IT changed faster than physics – so I expected a more dynamic, exciting field. What little did I know!
In 1973 my father was editor of the world’s first IT magazine, and he wrote an article entitled “To rollout successful systems, first debug the people problem.” I’m still trying to find a copy to post. It was all about management of change when introducing new IT systems, and the article is 100% valid today.
A few years later in 1975 an IBM engineer, Fred Brooks, wrote a fabulous book entitled “The Mythical Man Month” containing his wisdom and advice for software engineering projects:
After nearly 45 years, hardly any of the most important core principles has changed. The author himself writes in his newest addition:
“In preparing my update, I was struck by how few of the propositions have been critiqued, proven, or disproven by ongoing software research and experience.”
So I guess IT has the best of both worlds: new technologies are cool (I was impressed how my Apple MacBook actually logged into my FitBit scale – not the other way around!), new methodologies are exciting (even Agile is now ancient!), but just like in physics, the core principles don’t change.