Question

‘Having plans for a software product sometime in the future, I would like to know the best way to design a software product. Architecture (i.e. components and relations between components) first or the GUI?

Thanks.

Answer 1

For a while i thought the correct answer was architecture.

True story: about four years ago, I presenting the architecture for a software project to the executive team as part of our quarterly budget review process. The project didn’t get funded. Later, i asked why; one of the execs told me that no one knew what i was talking about, nor was it clear to them how much work had been done, nor how much was left to do–too uncertain they concluded.

About a year later, i gave another set of project summaries at the quarterly budget review. Having learned a valuable lesson, this time, for my group’s most significant early-stage project, i showed a GUI–little more than a wireframe for the main dashboard in which only a few of the buttons were actually clickable, and those just caused other wireframes to be loaded. We did this for each of the main sub-directories. For two days (and nights) work, our guys did an excellent job–clearly i was able to show the executive team exactly what the app would do.

The result: not funded. i asked one of the execs why–his response:

from your demo–which we loved, by the way–we thought you had completed it

Surely there’s a lesson here; i just have no idea what it is.