Don't press the Tuesday button!

Wouldn’t it be great if your mission-critical business software had every possible feature you could ever want?

Sound good?

Unfortunately, there’s always a catch!

Enter what I call the Tuesday button.

Not an actual button but a term I use to describe an unusual business rule that requires bespoke software customisation to accommodate the requirement – “We always do it this way …. apart from on Tuesday”

For every business rule, there is usually an exception. While I’m yet to find anyone who actually only wants to make changes on a Tuesday, I have encountered lots of scenarios where the business rules are broken by unusual circumstances.

To the person requesting the change it seems perfectly logical.

However, it needs to be specified, coded, tested, documented, installed, user tested, and project managed.

That’s a lot of effort … and quite often, a large price tag.

The fun really begins when it needs to be supported.

The person who wrote it may have left (it should be well documented but that’s another story).

The person who requested the change may have also left …. and the people in the business might not even know why the feature was needed or what it does!

The disruption in the business can be a big problem.

I’m not saying every bespoke customisation is bad, but keeping customisation to critical features only can sometimes be best.