Any activities outside the core set can result in unnecessary effort and frustration from lost time, opportunity, revenue and profit, he says. An organization may start out perfectly and experience quick euphoria. An organization may react to the change by trying to appease the dissenting voices. When that happens efforts may be focused on a dissatisfied minority at the expense of a satisfied majority, and in the worst scenario, he says, the organization spirals downward until it's disbanded. In the field of technology, he notes, this scenario is not uncommon.
Some failures are extremely costly.
Hathaway will use both successful and unsuccessful examples of software and systems development projects to provide insight into a variety of approaches to development methodology. As a software engineer with Hughes Aircraft, Hathaway says he experienced great success without realizing that the company's process infrastructure was partly responsible. Finding a dearth of such infrastructure after leaving Hughes he started to implement similar methodologies as director of developer services and later as vice president of engineering at GenRad Corporation.