Briefly, the area of work I’m currently involved with has already provided me with a shifted perspective on software development challenges in larger business environments. Some of the issues involved include:
- Giving consideration to integrating the new system with existing systems
- The complexity of some processes that to the end user may look like a simple action. For example sending a request from a particular supermarket store to their supplier; you must handle various problems such as validating stock, allocating stock, updating status and passing the order between various parties involved – do head office nead to know about it? How do I talk to the supplier’s system? etc..
Obviously here we’re thinking about broad architectural decisions involving large organisations, which is unlikely to be in the remit of your average development job. However they do have a knock on effect in terms of the technologies implemented that developers will end up using to put together their particular area of the system. Additionally it has made me realise there is more to the world of business software over the internet than meets the eye.
Clearly solutions must be scaled depending on the business’ requirement of the software, and simple solutions are very appropriate in many circumstances. But it has been interesting to see what lies on the other end of the spectrum of system requirements.
… And I’ve surprised myself with how removed from specific technical issues or pretty UI screens that post was!
