Ted Neward's article "Agile is treating the symptoms, not the disease" touches on several important points about the software industry.
- Modern software development tools and technologies require a significant learning curve.
- Development methodologies (like Agile) exist for managing complexity, but do not reduce the load of these technologies.
- In the last decade there has been no "Next Big Thing", like Access was in the 90s.
What's most interesting to me is:
We are in desperate need of simplicity in this industry. Whoever gets that, and gets it right, defines the "Next Big Thing".
What's true in the broader software world is also generally true in Healthcare IT. In HIT there has never been an Access equivalent, just a lot of pieces and parts trying unsuccessfully to work together.
The need was touched on in Liberate the Data!. Simplicity is desperately needed in order to create the "First Big Thing" for HIT interoperability.
UPDATE (10/14/09): More commentary:
