WSE Trading Halted: How To Fail On A Live Software Project

On the heels of this comment, I started poking around. After a few minutes, I found the announcement on the WSE site which states:

TEMPORARY TRADING HALT

Submitted by: World Stock Exchange (WSE)
Date: July 29, 2007

We are currently reviewing the trading platform to ensure that all bugs have been fixed. We are also reviewing all user accounts to rectify any balance discrepancies resulting from previous trading errors.

All trading of listed companies on the World Stock Exchange will be halted until 12PM PDT, JULY 2007.

Of course, the date seems to be missing - but with only 2 days left in July, I suppose people should be happy that the announcement did not have August as the month.

With allegations of outright censorship of content on the WSE Live site and the lackluster performance over the past week, it is apparent that WSE has a lot to learn about updating software on live projects. For people who want to know how to fail at such a project, I thought I would give some quick pointers which I picked up in the last 18 years of professional software development.

How To Fail On A Live Software Project

• Change the code on the live servers! This saves you the cost of creating a development environment where you would have 'wasted' money on silly things like testing and documentation.
• Release new code and make everyone a beta tester without their knowledge or consent.
• Miss deadlines and give non-answers and dubious explanations when cornered by users.

If you follow these guidelines, you can and will fail at a live software project. If the failure surpasses the suspension of disbelief of users, this can adversely affect a business. It is unfortunate that people feel the need to gain this experience the hard way, but it is what it is.

How To Succeed On A Live Software Project

Simple: Before doing anything, making any announcements or anything else - simply create a separate development environment and do all testing there. [w:Linden Lab] does this with the beta grid; websites do this with development areas on servers separate from the area in use. Beta code on a live server is high risk. With the production environment separate, everything stays quiet and the only deadline one has to worry about is the one that is announced.