This Guest paper originated from a series of Emails on the ubiquitous Internet. It was prompted by differing views on the reaction of customers to new products. While the author does not profess to be a software project manager, her insights in managing her own work as projects are particularly valuable.
Copyright K. Jones© 2005.
Published here May 2005.

Editor's Preamble | Kate Jones' Viewpoint
On Salability | On Designs and Development
On Government and Private Enterprise | On the Human Response

On Government and Private Enterprise

Only the government can afford to subsidize unprofitable ventures and self-destructive programs, because it can draw on the wealth, the blank check, of its subjects via forced taxation. Any nation on such a course is eventually doomed.

A private enterprise, to be successful, must by definition be profitable. Profit is a corporation's wages. How to assure profits? Make what people want and need and are willing to pay for. Where do they get the money to pay? From their work. What do they do? Ideally something that is useful to others: a dynamic balance of mutual exchange. Each gains, and the ultimate source is not just their labor but what the earth provided, and the sun, and what human intelligence made of them. For all our cleverness and pride, it is still the raw materials we need to learn how to convert. For real, in the real world.

We learn from the consequences, albeit sometimes very long-waved ones: polluted air, saturated landfills, exhausted supplies. New solutions are sought out, in alternating rhythms of efficacy, like Joe's iterative process, and Mr. Walker's feedback volleys, or the swing of a pendulum eventually zeroing in on target center. Always the tacit premise persists that cost cannot exceed return. Successful patterns are reinforced, the memes strengthened, the grid locked more securely, the gains consolidated.

On Designs and Development  On Designs and Development

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