Finally, I have the time to re-start the started blog after a long vacation.

People would be amazed to learn just how many sharks swim in the waters just off shore on the east coast of the US.  After fishing for 6 nights straight on the end of a pier ordered by my boss (wife) to catch an array of fresh eatable sea fare, I pulled in 22 sharks of various types ranging from 1-3.5 feet in length that are not too appetizing.  I hooked into 4 sharks that I could do nothing with other than let my line break and must assume they were around 22 feet in length and would have given Jaws a run for his money.  Perhaps it was what I was fishing with, cut bait.  Which just so happens to coincide directly with a shark's requirements for eating: bloody, meaty, not resistant to being eaten and not to hard to catch as it is quietly resting on the bottom.  This allowed me to develop the analogy between pier fishing and enterprise software architecture...

For the last 2 years I have been subtlety criticizing my customers about their tendency to recommend a browser based UI for every single application that came across their desks instead of also considering a SmartClient.  Every project was a shark, thus they had to use cut bait as the primary requirements for the catch.  The project teams and architects rarely addressed business requirements that could be better addressed with different technology (SmartClients) as all they had to fish with was cut bait. (Other types of bait had long proven incapable of catching sharks)  So when requirements demanded changes from what the cut bait could directly address, they simply changed the gage of their hook, increased the strength of their line and used a bigger rod and reel as the shark their were going to catch must simply be a bigger shark.

But what the business really wants is not a shark, but a tasty sea bass.  So instead of cut bait, they should fish with shrimp (and a smaller hook)...

Perhaps the realization of this analogy was due to me not listening to my boss's (wife's) requirements for me to catch something that we could actually eat that was really fresh.  Instead, I wanted to catch the biggest meanest fish in the sea, thus I fished with big cut bait and my boss was quite unhappy...

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