The Software Company Machine

Software company employees live in silos. Software developers learn how to develop software but learn little or nothing about marketing, sales, or finance. Consequently, software development companies do not function as systems. Instead, they function as a set of totally asynchronous and rarely communicating divisions that succeed by accident, not by design. A software development company (in fact, any company) might achieve more success if it thinks of itself as a finely crafted and well-tuned machine. A software development company is a machine comprising three engines: the financial engine provides resources to power the other two engines. Each engine can thrive only when all three engines thrive. Properly maintaining the engines requires a plan that shows how resources move across the engine boundaries as a function of time. Software development companies will thrive more when managers of individual engines understand how the entire machine behaves.