EAI Blog

I ran across your blog while doing a google search for zywave. I frequently look for mention of our name and the names of our key competitors in blogs and other social communities. They tend to be a great way to figure out the pulse of our user community.

Anyway, I was intrigued by your posting mentioning the difficultly in transitioning from the academic world to the real world. Personally, I think the biggest difference tends to be in the requirements area. In academia, requirements are unchanging, constant, and perfect. Of course, this simplicity allows you to focus on your actual discipline of programming. While this is necessary to learn the skills of the trade, it is incredibly unrealistic in the business world. Business requirements change all of the time – regardless of the development methodology employed by the organization. Zywave’s move to agile / scrum was our way of dealing with the ever-changing nature of our business and the competitive landscape which we operate in. Other companies will choose other methodologies, but in the end, more products will fail because of improper translation of biz/user requirements than any other single reason.

As a personal development challenge, I offer the following advice…. Your ability to deal with ambiguity (both business and technical) will be as big of a predicator of your long-term success as your actual technical skills. Try and think about the what-ifs… what-if the requirements change? Is my solution scalable and extensible? Don’t let the indecision paralyze you, however. The more you know the business environment in which you operate in & the big-picture of the product you’re assigned to – the more likely it is that you’ll be able to make the right decisions and select the right trade-offs when dealing with your “micro-level” programming assignments. You don’t have to understand every last thing a large product does, but you have to make sure your work is aligned to the rest of the product and the purpose/vision of the product.

While I haven’t had a chance to meet with your personally, I hope you’re enjoying your time at Zywave. Not sure if you know this, but I started out as an intern here too.

Yours,
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Jim Emling
EVP, Zywave