Monday April 18, 2005

Myth #10 - For Senior VPs, the power of 10

What I wouldn't give for VPs to read this blog! Actually, it'd be great if they read all the myths, but you can't have everything (where would you put it?)

"We added internationalization in the last release, so we're done."

I find it almost unfathomable that any exec would believe this, and yet I have heard it from more than one. Saying this is like saying "We wrote the code in the last release, so we're done." I hope that there isn't a software VP out there who would say that. Internationalization is inherent in the architecture, design, and implementation of a product. In reality it is part of the entire process of creating, distributing, and selling a product, but I'll just stick to the software development portion. When designing a product, international requirements must be considered in the design and architecture, otherwise you may have to redesign and rewrite the product to enable support of other language and locale data. I have seen it happen, and most recently, a product was scrapped because it wasn't worth rewriting it. What sort of things can trip you on design? Take a look at my article on this very topic: Internationalization in Software Design, Architecture and Implementation

Every time there is a change in design, the addition of functionality, new code written, there is internationalization. It, too, like all aspects of a changing product, needs to change. It is part and parcel of the entire software development process, from requirements gathering, to design specification, to implementation, to testing, to release. Unless the product itself is done, internationalization work needs to continue.

And the myths go on (they go to 11) ...

( Apr 18 2005, 09:15:03 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]